Two Ways by S. S. Times

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 28, 1884

Two Ways.

By S. S. Times

If you merely want to make yourself a social favorite, and to be always ready with surface conversation on any and every topic which may come up in a miscellaneous company, it may be well for you to skim a little of everything in your reading, and to catch a point on one subject here, and a point on another subject there, and a half-dozen points on a half-dozen other subjects in a half-dozen other directions. You will have to look over the newspapers and the magazines, and the new books of every kind, as they appear, and this without neglecting a fresh glance, now and then, over old books generally. You must flit over the whole field as a butterfly does over the flower-beds. But on the other hand, if you want to gain solid information on any subject, or to improve your mind for your own benefit, or for the benefit of anybody else, you must pursue a very different course from this. You must take up one thing at a time, and devote yourself to an examination of that. You will not have leisure to read newspapers or magazines to any considerable extent, or to examine one new book in a hundred, or one old book in ten thousand. It is true that this is not living a butterfly life; but a butterfly, you know, is not trying to improve his mind; nor has he any real business on hand. A bee's way is very different from a butterfly's. A bee does not "gather honey all the day, from every opening flower," even though Dr. Watts supposed that was the bee's way of doing business. Naturalists inform us that a bee never takes pollen (honey-stock) of more than one kind on any one trip away from the hive. In fact, there is no use trying to do more than one thing at a time in any business line. The choice must be made between the butterfly style and the bee style; and you have already made your choice of method.—S. S. Times.