Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/815

Rh seen, an imperative necessity to every individual who desires to possess a sound working mind in a sound working body. Hence I do not hesitate to say that one of our most weighty duties in life is to ascertain the kinds and degrees of recreation which are most suitable to ourselves or to others, and then with all our hearts to utilize the one, while with all our powers we encourage the other. Be it remembered that by recreation I mean only that which with the least expenditure of time renders the exhausted energies most fitted to resume their work; and be it also remembered that recreation is necessary not only for maintaining our powers of work so far as these are dependent on our vitality, but also for maintaining our happiness so far as this is dependent on our health. Remembering these things, I entertain no fear of contradiction when I conclude that, whether we look to the community as a whole, or restrict our view to our own individual selves, we have no duty to discharge of a more high and serious kind than this—rationally to understand and properly to apply the principles of all that in the full but only legitimate sense of the word we call recreation. Again, therefore, I say, if we know these things, happy are we if we do them. And if we desire to do them—if as rational and moral creatures we desire to obey the most solemn injunction that ever fell from human lips, "Work while it is day"—we must remember that the daylight of our life may be clouded by our folly or shortened by our sin; that the work which we may hope to do we shall be enabled to do only by hearkening to that Wisdom who holdeth in her right hand length of days, in her left hand riches and honor; and that at last, when all to us is dark with the darkness of an unknown night, such Wisdom will not have cried to us in vain, if she has taught us how to sow most plenteously a harvest of good things that our children's children are to reap.—Nineteenth Century.



HE wonders of the course of nature have ever challenged attention. In savagery, in barbarism, and in civilization alike, the mind of man has sought the explanation of things. The movements of the heavenly bodies, the change of seasons, the succession of night and day, the powers of the air, majestic mountains, ever-flowing rivers, perennial springs, the flight of birds, the gliding of serpents,