In my writing days, I used to read
mainly for the purposes of my books, or, if I turned aside to
general reading at all, it was to personal, intime, subjective
books that I turned, books in which one could see the development
of character, analyse emotion, acquire psychological experience;
but now I find a growing interest in sociological and historical
ideas; a mist begins to roll away from my mental horizon, and I
realise how small was the circle in which I was walking. I
sometimes find myself hoping that this may mean the possibility of
a wider flight; but I do not, strange to say, care very much about
the prospect. Just at present, I appear to myself to have been like
a botanist walking in a great forest, looking out only for small
typical specimens of certain classes of ground-plants, without any
eyes for the luxurious vegetation, the beauty of the rich opening
glade, the fallen day of the dense underwood.
Then too I have begun to read regularly with the children; I did it
formerly, but only fitfully, and I am sorry to say grudgingly. But
now it has become a matter of intense interest to me, to see how
thoughts strike on eager and ingenuous minds. I find my trained
imagination a great help here, because it gives me the power of
clothing a bare scene with detail, and of giving vitality to an
austere figure.
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