Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/799

 must be some further reason—probably to be sought for within the limits of the nervous system itself—why a flow of happy feelings serves to re-create the nervous energies. But, be the reasons what they may, we must never neglect to remember the fact that the influence of all others most detrimental to recreation is the absence of agreeable emotions or the presence of painful ones. There is, for instance, comparatively little use in taking so-called constitutional exercise at stated times, if the mind during these times is emotionally colorless, or, still worse, aching with sorrow and care. If recreation is to be of good quality, it must before all things be of a kind to stimulate pleasurable feelings, and while it lasts it ought to engross the whole of our consciousness. Half-hearted action is quite as little remunerative here as elsewhere; and, if we desire to work well, no less in play than in work must we fulfill the saying, "What thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."

Having stated this practical principle as of paramount importance in all recreation, I shall devote the rest of my space to giving a variety of suggestions concerning the recreation of all classes of society; and, for the sake of securing method to my discussion, I shall primarily consider the community in its most natural classes of men, women, and children.

There is not much to be said on the recreation of men belonging to the upper classes. That most objectionable of creatures, the gentleman at large without occupation, has a free choice before him of every amusement that the world has to give; but one thing he is hopelessly denied—the keen enjoyment of recreation. Living from year to year in a round of varied pastimes, he becomes slowly incapacitated for forming habits of work, while at the same time he is slowly sapping all the enjoyment from play. For, although variety of amusement may please for a time, it is notorious that it can not do so indefinitely. The intellectual changes which are involved in changes of amusement are not sufficiently pronounced to re-create even the faculties on which the sense of amusement depends; the mind, therefore, becomes surfeited with amusement of all kinds, just as it may become surfeited with a tune too constantly played—even though the tune be played in frequently changing keys. For such men, if past middle life, I have no advice to give. They have placed themselves beyond the possibility of finding recreation, and their only use in the world is to show the doom of idleness. They, more even than paupers, are the parasites of the social organism; and we can scarcely regret that their lumpish life, being one of stagnation self-induced, should be one of miserable failure, to the wretchedness of which we can extend no hope.

Turning next to gentlemen of active pursuits, I may most fitly begin with those who are beginning life at the universities. At our larger universities both the provisions for recreation and the manner