I was once speaking on this subject to Sir Jesse Boot, telling him how
hard I had found it to amuse and distract the mind of one of my children
in the extreme weakness which fell upon her after an operation. I told
him that I had searched my book-shelves for stories, histories,
anthologies, and journeyings; that I had carried to the bedside piles of
books which I thought the most suitable; and that I had read from these
books day after day, succeeding for some few minutes at a time to
interest the sick child, but ending almost in every case with failure
and defeat. I found that humour could bore, that narrative could
irritate, that essays could worry and perplex, that poetry could
depress, and that wit could tease with its cleverness. Moreover, I found
that one could not go straight to any anthology in existence without
coming unexpectedly, and before one was aware of it, upon some passage
so mournful or sad or pathetic that it undid at a sentence all the good
which had been done by luckier reading. My friend, who is himself a
great reader, and who has borne for some years a heavy burden of
infirmity, agreed that cheerful reading is of immense help in sickness
and also confessed that it is difficult to find any one book which
ministers to a mind weakened by illness or tortured by insomnia.
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