Anecdotal Evidence: `Have a Book Open on Your Dressing Table'

Anecdotal Evidence: `Have a Book Open on Your Dressing Table'
Excerpt:
Sir William Osler, who adorned your profession in the United States for many years, is cordially presented.”

Here is the third of four paragraphs:

“May you share with him his `relish of knowledge’ and his absorbing love and passionate, persistent search for truth.”

One can hardly imagine the world suggested by this gift and message, even if we dismiss it as promotional boilerplate...
“get the education, if not of a scholar, at least of a gentleman,” and suggests:

“Before going to sleep read for half an hour, and in the morning have a book open on your dressing table. You will be surprised to find how much can be accomplished in the course of a year.”

Here is Osler’s prescription for a liberal education:

I. Old and New Testament.
II. Shakespeare.
III. Montaigne.
IV. Plutarch’s Lives.
V. Marcus Aurelius.
VI. Epictetus.
VII. Religio Medici.
VIII. Don Quixote.
IX. Emerson.
X. Oliver Wendell Holmes—Breakfast-Table Series.
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