holiday

"Millions read without asking themselves why they read and whether in all their reading they have learned anything worth spending of their time. It was not for nothing Thoreau said an old newspaper would do him just as well as a new one.

Each of us can sit alone with our conscience for a
while on the proposition of Robert Louis Stevenson,
that the intelligent man can find an Iliad of the
human race in a newspaper.

And any kindly philosopher could write a thick book on why the shrewd, tolerant reader enjoys even a stupid, vain, hypocritical book because the writer of the book is etching his own portrait on every page, stepping forth and talking off lines like one of the fools, clowns or pretenders in a Russian play."

an excerpt from Carly Moon,
by Carl Sandburg