I should like to write an essay, but shall in
fact only write a paragraph, on the reading habits of the middle classes, or a large section of them. Not long ago I happened to stay at four different hotels on consecutive nights. There were several other guests at each. They no doubt had' quite different characteristics, but they were uniform in one thing, that only one of them, so far as I can remember, read a book. They did not even bring periodicals with them. After dinner they aimlessly turned over old copies of the cheaper illustrated papers. And when they had got tired of that they went to bed. Last week I had occasion to take a longish railway journey. On the way down I shared a carriage with a clergyman (or minister) and his wife, middle-aged or under. Between them they had What's on in London, one copy of the Daily Telegraph, one copy of Readers' Digest. The two former lasted them more than two hours (they divided the daily paper). Then the husband took up the Readers' Digest, but it was too much for him, and he went to•sleep instead. Coming back the next day I travelled for four and a half hours with a young doctor, obviously intelligent. The literature he had equipped himself with was the Daily Mail, Picture Post and Illustrated. The one thing that reconciles me to the boredom of train-travel is the opportunity it gives for a little solid reading. But I am clearly out of step with the herd.
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