Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/201

Rh good deal of horseback-riding and carriage-driving on the excellent thoroughfares of the town and the pleasant roads through the woods and the farming country. But, though the prices are reasonable, this amusement is only for those who can pay for it. There was no bowling-alley last year, though one was promised for the ensuing season. Hut what is most needed of all in such a place is a gymnasium, where active and regular exercise may be taken to counteract the besetting evils of idleness, and as an indispensable means of improving the health. Our constitutions are made for activity, and only those who cultivate their bodily powers by systematic exercises really know what enjoyment there is in well-earned appetite and invigorated life. The facilities for simple but adequate gymnastic exercises do not cost much, and, while the large majority of visitors would probably not patronize them, they would yet be invaluable to many. In the absence of a regular gymnasium, however, I fell back on Wood's five-dollar "Parlor Gymnastics," which can be carried in a satchel and used anywhere, and which really answers a most excellent purpose. They have a Library Association at Thomasville, and a very pleasant readingroom, but a larger stock of books is much needed.

There was, however, one never-failing source alike of interest, amusement, and instruction, which, though not confined to Thomasville, very much alleviated the monotony of my stay; I mean the "colored brother." As an abstraction from much reading I had long known him; but it was different to come upon the negroes in concrete mass, in their habitat, so as to observe the attributes of the actual object in a composite state of society. This was all new to me, and, with my old abolition education of strong convictions and little real knowledge, I found extreme interest in studying the negro direct, as a social object-lesson. He is playing his new part as citizen, voter, politician, laborer, learner, litigant, and Christian, with curious and instructive results; and in observing his treatment in the courts, in getting the views of individuals, in looking into the colored schools, but, most of all, in attending the so-called religious services in the colored churches, a good deal of time was pleasantly and usefully occupied, and I came to the conclusion that the more Northern people go South and see for themselves the more they will know of those facts which it is very important they should better understand.