Quote for the day: "The magic hat that annihilates time and space"

"One of the great functions of reading, and especially of novel reading (which is in reality one of the most important influences in education, is to widen the sympathies by throwing the reader into a larger circle of life than his own; by putting on his head Teufelsdröckh's magic hat, that annihilates time and space. This is what the great books do so magnificently, and what the second and third-rate books do so miserably and falsely. Think of the splendid series of experiences that becomes the possession of the boy or girl when first they have read through the eight great books of George Eliot. What a world is opened up even by a single novel like Romola; what sympathies are stirred by Adam Bede; what insight into the misunderstandings that flow from mere differences of character is the gift of The Mill on the Floss; what realisation of the struggle between generous ideals and mean circumstances is awakened by Middlemarch!

"If the taste of young people be gradually formed and developed by such [small] steps.... until they arrive at love for Stevenson, Scott, Austen, the Brontes, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, they will at least have a fair chance of escape from being "at the mercy of every book that interests them," or of being captivated by Superfluous Women, Women who Did, Heavenly Twins, Mighty Atoms, and the rest of the ephemeral brood. They will gain too sensitive an ear to desire Keynotes or Discords. "--Ronald McNeill, "The Choice of Literature for the Young," in The Parent's Review, Volume 8, no. 9, 1897, pgs. 561-568; 624-630