Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/144

 athletic exercise and active play would be to the children's health, and how happy it would make them. Why, I have seen two swings make children so happy, I have been ashamed to think how few we have in London. They don't take much space, and what delight they give!

A clergyman near here is about to fit up a yard as a gymnasium for the men belonging to a workmen's club, and doubtless others will do the same.

The uses to which even a small playground in London may be put would take long to describe. I have charge of two, where, besides opening them every Saturday and in the summer evenings, every May we have a real maypole—flowers from the country in thousands, flags flying, band playing, swings, and see-saws fully used, children marching, dancing, and skipping, and a kind and able body of ladies and gentlemen who know them amusing them, keeping order, and increasing by their presence the sense of festivity. The trustees