Chapter XXVIII Reading for What You Want to Be
Biography is not only interesting reading, it helps us to understand other people. In this chapter we may discover that there are few better ways of finding out what kind of work we want to undertake than by reading biography.
First of all, let us think of a very few famous biographies, such books as Plutarch’s Lives, Boswell’s Johnson, Lockhart’s Scott, Forster’s Dickens, Morley’s Life of Gladstone, Churchill’s Lord Randolph Churchill, Page’s Life and Letters, Sir Sidney Lee’s Shakespeare.
Numberless people have read and used Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men. We know that Shakespeare did. If you will turn to the last life in Plutarch’s book, the life of Brutus, you will find that Shakespeare must have used this biography of Brutus when he wrote the play Julius Cæsar.
Now we may think of biography as a magic key that will help you to unlock the door behind which you may find what work you are going to do. Let us ask ourselves what occupations these famous men followed whose lives appear in the list given above.
Johnson was a journalist, and an author, and he made a dictionary. Scott was a lawyer, an officer of the Crown, and a novelist; one might almost add that he was something of a farmer. You remember how he loved the land he owned at Abbotsford, and used to ride over it and talk with his men about their work. Dickens was a reporter, a novelist, and, towards the end of his life, he gave public readings from his works. Gladstone was a statesman; he had great skill in finance; and on account of his associations at home, he had somewhat of the training of a business man. He also was interested in the land. You may read in his biography how he used to employ himself cutting down trees, that needed to be felled, on his estate. Lord Randolph Churchill was a statesman. Page was an editor, and a diplomatist. Shakespeare was an actor, the manager of a theatre, and a dramatist. Already you know how to find in biography some knowledge of a good many different occupations.
A great many of you will be farmers. The well-being and health of the world depend directly on farming; and the life of a farmer and of a farmer’s family may be happy, independent and wonderfully useful and interesting. To learn about the life of a farmer, one must read other books as well as biography. Three of the novels that we have enjoyed reading contain vivid, true pictures of the life of people who live on a farm. The first of these novels is Scott’s Guy Mannering. You remember the farm called Charlies-hope, and Dandie Dinmont and his wife and children. Scott dearly loved and thoroughly understood country life, and there is no more charming picture in a book of the natural, happy life of the farmer and his wife and children than in this novel by Scott. The second novel is George Eliot’s Adam Bede. Mr. and Mrs. Poyser had much skill in their occupation. It is interesting to discover how well Mrs. Poyser understands farming, especially dairy farming. Lorna Doone is another novel about farm people. A Scottish poet, Robert Burns, was the son of a tenant farmer, and was himself a ploughman and a farmer. He has written much that is exquisite about country life. Ask someone to read aloud to you “The Cotter’s Saturday Night”, a wonderful picture of family affection and good living. You may find some of the words hard to understand. But whoever it is that reads the poem aloud to you will likely find the difficult words explained in a glossary. These are all English and Scottish writers. Hamlin Garland has written a good deal about the life of an American farmer, moving to new settlements, in his book called A Son of the Middle Border. In Will Carleton’s verse and James Whitcombe Riley’s verse we find songs and stories of farm life. Peter McArthur’s books, In Pastures Green, The Red Cow and Her Friends, and Around Home, contain true, intimate, delightful pictures of farming in the older provinces of Canada.
And so we see how interesting reading about occupations may be. In the list that follows most of the books are biographies, lives of sailors, soldiers, architects, teachers, clergymen, business men, bankers, lawyers, actors, doctors, painters, craftsmen, journalists, nurses, musicians, explorers, scientists, workmen. There are other books, as well, about animals, and plants, nature and country walks, flying, mountain climbing, inventions, hobbies, and science, about some of the many wonderful pursuits in which you are interested already, or in which you will be interested soon.
If you look in the list for the name of some particular book and do not find it, whether it is the name of a biography belonging to some occupation, or of a book telling about some recreation of which you want to learn, you may go to a library and ask for help in finding the book. Or if you cannot go to the library, write to the librarian and ask him to tell you.
Some day you may make a list of your own favourite books. No one person needs to read all the books named here, but boys and girls may choose from the list a few of the books they want to read. In the case of birds, flowers, and the study of nature, each neighbourhood or district of country needs to be classified according to its latitude and longitude. Birds, flowers and plants vary according to climate; look for their descriptions in books belonging to your own district of country.
| Life of Nelson | Robert Southey |
| Sir John Franklin | A. H. Markham |
| Life and Voyages of | Washington Irving |
| Christopher Columbus | |
| My Mystery Ships | Gordon Campbell |
| There Go the Ships | Archibald MacMechan |
| The Life of Marlborough | Viscount Wolseley |
| James Wolfe, Man and Soldier | W. T. Waugh |
| Life of Gordon | Sir Wm. Francis Butler |
| (English Men of Action) |
| Life of Lord Kitchener | Sir George Arthur |
| Personal Memoirs | U. S. Grant |
| Lee the American | Gamaliel Bradford |
| Life of St. Francis | St. Bonaventura (Everymans) |
| Life of Dean Stanley | R. E. Prothero |
| Life of Alexander White, | G. F. Barber |
| D.D., of Free St. | |
| George’s Edinburgh | |
| Phillips Brooks, 1835-1893 | A. V. G. Allen |
| Margaret Ogilvy, by her son | J. M. Barrie |
| Bonnet and Shawl | Philip Guedalla |
| The Life of Florence Nightingale | Sir E. T. Cook |
| Sister Dora | M. Lonsdale |
| Life of Sophia Jex-Blake | Margaret Todd, M.D. |
| Mary Slessor of Calabar | W. P. Livingstone |
| In the House of My Pilgrimage | Lilian Faithfull, J.P. |
| The Heart of Ellen Terry | Ellen Terry |
| Louisa May Alcott, her | Ednah D. Cheney |
| life, letters and journals | |
| The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer | G. H. Palmer |
| Life and Correspondence | A. P. Stanley |
| of Thomas Arnold | |
| Life of Charles W. Eliot | E. H. Cotton |
| Life and Correspondence | Ernest Hartley Coleridge |
| of Lord Coleridge | |
| Richard Burdon Haldane, | |
| An Autobiography | |
| Reminiscences of Sir | Ed. by Richard Harris |
| Henry Hawkins | |
| Life of Joseph H. Choate | E. S. Martin |
| A Memoir of Sir James | Prof. J. Duns, D.D. |
| Young Simpson | |
| Lord Lister | Sir Rickman J. Godlee |
| Life of Sir William Osler | H. W. Cushing |
| The Beloved Physician, Sir | R. McNair Wilson |
| James MacKenzie | |
| Pierre Curie | Marie Curie |
| Life and Letters of Charles | Francis Darwin |
| Robert Darwin | |
| The Voyage of the Beagle | Charles Darwin (Everymans) |
| Life and Letters of Thomas | Leonard Huxley |
| Henry Huxley | |
| The Life of Louis Pasteur | René Vallery-Radot |
| Autobiography | Benjamin Franklin (Everymans) |
| From Immigrant to Inventor | Michael I. Pupin |
| Alexander Graham Bell | Catherine MacKenzie |
| Delane of The Times | E. T. Cook |
| Life and Letters of E. L. Godkin | R. Ogden |
| Abraham Lincoln | Lord Charnwood |
| Our Inheritance | Stanley Baldwin |
| Memoirs of Sir John Alexander | Sir Joseph Pope |
| Macdonald | |
| Sir Wilfrid Laurier and | J. S. Willison |
| the Liberal Party | |
| Self-Help | Samuel Smiles |
| The Rise of the House of | Count Corti |
| Rothschild | |
| From Workhouse to Westminster, | George Haw |
| The Life of Will Crooks. | |
| Sir Christopher Wren | Sir Lawrence Weaver |
| Life of Michelangelo | J. A. Symonds |
| Buonarroti | |
| Valasquez | R. A. M. Stevenson |
| Life of Sir Edward Burne-Jones | Lady Burne-Jones |
| Life of William Morris | J. W. Mackail |
| William de Morgan and his Wife | A. M. D. W. Stirling |
| Life of Purcell | W. H. Cummings |
| Beethoven | Romaine Holland |
| Life of Felix Mendelssohn | W. A. Lampadius |
| Bartholdy | |
| Life of Sir Henry Irving | Austin Brereton |
| Empty Chairs | Squire Bancroft |
| The Compleat Angler | Isaak Walton (Everymans) |
| Natural History of Selborne | Gilbert White (Everymans) |
| Walden | H. D. Thoreau (Everymans) |
| Afoot in England | W. H. Hudson |
| Rambles of a Canadian | S. T. Wood |
| Naturalist | |
| The Outline of Science | J. Arthur Thomson |
| Scenery of Scotland | Sir Archibald Geikie |
| Elementary Geology | A. P. Coleman |
| Introduction to Geology | W. B. Scott |
| Stories of Starland | Mary Procter |
| Astronomy for Amateurs | C. Flammarion |
| Conquest of the Air | C. L. M. Brown |
| 14,000 Miles Through the Air | Sir Ross MacPherson Smith |
| Winged Warfare | Col. W. A. Bishop, V.C. |
| The Ascent of Mount Everest | Sir Francis Younghusband |
| The Canadian Rockies | A. P. Coleman |
| Handbook of Birds of | Frank M. Chapman |
| Eastern North America | |
| Field Book of American | F. Schuyler Mathews |
| Wild Flowers | |
| Garden Cities of Tomorrow | E. Howard |
| A Book About Roses | Dean Hole |
| The Little Garden | Mrs. Francis King |
| The Canadian Garden | Mrs. Annie L. Jack |
| The Boys’ Own Book of | Morley Adams |
| Pets and Hobbies | |
| Models to Make | A. Duncan Stubbs |
| Model Airplanes | Elmer Adam |
| Health, Strength and Happiness | C. W. Saleeby |