to enjoy books he need never have a dull or a lonesome moment. No matter where he may be, if he has an interesting book at hand, he can soon in imagination surround himself with interesting scenes and pleasing friends, and his cares and his boredom will vanish. If a boy likes to read, an evening at home alone, a long wait in an otherwise dull railway station, lack of companionship for a time, isolation of any sort, will not only have no horrors for him, but may even be for a time a source of actual enjoyment. I always like a rainy day or a stormy night in winter, or a quiet undisturbed Sunday afternoon, because it furnishes a chance to stay in-doors and to cultivate the companionship of an entertaining book.
When I hear boys, or men, complaining of the fact that Sunday is such a long, dull day, that there is nowhere to go and nothing to do, when I see them yawning with the weariness of leisure and strolling aimlessly down the street tired of existence, I know for one thing that they find little comfort in religion, and for another, that they have not cultivated the reading habit, and so find little pleasure in books. I am always sorry to think what pleasure they have missed, and I wish that I might lead them into the friendships and the companionships which are so easily formed through reading. Think what it must mean not to have known and enjoyed Wilkins Micawber, and King Lear, and Tom Tulliver, and D'Artagnan and Sidney Carton and Colonel Newcome
