The Royal Path of Life

In the late 1800s, a publishing sensation swept over America. A six-hundredpage book entitled, The Royal Path of Life, written by two Chicagoans, became popular both in the refined East and in the pioneer West. It was filled with qt1aint maxims, observations, and homespun wisdom. Here are some segments from the chapter entitled “Reading’’: • There are four classes of readers.

The first is like the hour-glass. With their reading being like the sand, it runs in and runs out and leaves no vestige behind. A second is like a sponge which imbibes everything, and returns it in the same state, only a little dirtier. A third is like a jelly bag, allowing all that is pure to pass away, retaining only the refuse and dregs.

The fourth are like workers in the diamond mines of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, obtain only pure gems. • One’s reading is usually a fair index of his character. • “A man is known,” it is said, “by the company he keeps.” It is equally true that a man’s character may be to a great extent ascertained by knowing what books he reads. • You cannot afford to read a bad book, however good you are.

You say, “The influence is insignificant.” I tell you that the scratch of a pin has sometimes produced the lockjaw. • Inferior books are to be rejected, in an age and time when we are courted by whole libraries.

And no man’s life is long enough to compass even those which are good and great and famous. Why should we bow down at puddles? • To read with profit, the books must be of a kind calculated to inform the mind, correct the head, and better the heart. These books should be read with attention, understood and remembered, and their precepts put in practice. It depends less on the number than quality.

One good book well understood and remembered, is of more use than to have a superficial knowledge of fifty, equally sound.