Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/474

458 his enemies. It is not hard work that drives our young men to seek a Lethe in alcohol: we read of Grecian soldiers marching fifty miles a day in heavy armor; of hunters running down a wild-boar, and of teamsters yoking themselves to a car when their horses had broken down. Many of our New England boys, who go on a whaling cruise rather than die of ennui, would gladly consent to work, in the ancient sense of the word, if they could exchange their Pecksniff-day for a Grecian festival. The Aryan nations, too, had their sacred days and sacred rites, but their Nature-worship was the mist that rises from the woods and meadows, and blends with the ethereal hues of the sky; the Hebrew priestcraft dogma is a poison-cloud which for centuries has darkened the light of the sun and blighted the fairest flowers.

In choosing the mode of a child's recreations, it should be borne in mind that their main purpose is to restore the tone of the mind and its harmony with the physical instincts by supplying the chief deficiencies of our ordinary employment. For a hard-working blacksmith, fun, pure and simple, would be a sufficient pastime, while brain-workers need a recreation that combines amusement with physical exercise—the unloosening of the brain-fiber with the tension of the muscles. Emulation and the presence of relatives and schoolmates impart to competitive gymnastics a charm which a spirited boy would not exchange for the passive pleasure of witnessing the best circus-performance. Wrestling, lance-throwing, archery, base-ball, and a well-contested foot-race, can awaken the enthusiasm of the Grecian palæstra, and professional gymnasts will take the same delight in the equally healthful though less dramatic trials of strength at the horizontal bar. But, on the play-ground, such exercises should be divested from the least appearance of being a task—even children can not be happy on compulsion.

There is also too much in-door and in-town work about the present life of our schoolboys. Encourage their love of the woods; let us make holidays a synonym of picnic excursions, and enlarge the definition of camp-meetings; of all the known modes of inspiration, forest air and the view of a beautiful landscape are the most inexpensive, especially from a moral standpoint, being never followed by a splenetic reaction. A ramble in the depths of a pathless forest, or on the heights of an Alpenland, between rocks and lonely mountain-meadows, opens well-springs of life unknown to the prisoners of the city tenements.

But the chief curse of our in-door life is, after all, its dullness; and its direct antidote merriment, therefore the chief point about all real recreations. Fun and laughter have become the most effective cordials of our materia medica, and their promotion a most important branch of the science of happiness. There is no such thing as genuine frolic in the stifling atmosphere of a stove-room; the shady lawn in summer and the open hall in winter make a better play-ground than the stuffy