Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/91

1866.] If the proposed change shall tend to promote that intelligence and virtue, it will be the part of true patriotism to effect it. Whether this particular means be or be not the wisest for the end in view, the path of the higher life unquestionably lies in this direction. The accomplishment of the greatest results with the least outlay of time and toil is the problem in physical science. With the leisure and strength thus redeemed from lower needs, to build up a royal manhood is the problem of moral science.

The Saturday half-holiday is less an affair of law and legislature, depends more upon private men and women, but is of scarcely less importance. It is not to be disguised that there are difficulties and dangers attending the plan. It is as yet probably regarded only as an experiment, though certain classes of mercantile men have been trying it for years, with what satisfaction their persistence in it indicates. Undoubtedly there are many young men who misspend their holiday, and many more who do not know what to do with it, and who will finally fall into mischief through sheer idleness. The hours drag so heavily, that they half conclude they would about as soon be at work as at liberty with nothing to do. Possibly there are more who abuse their holiday than use it advantageously. But just as far as this trouble extends, so far it shows, not the harm of leisure, but the sore straits we have been brought to for lack of it. There is no sadder result of the disuse of a faculty than the decadence of that faculty. Time is the essential gift of God to man,—essential not merely to providing for his physical wants, but to forming his character, to developing his powers, to cultivating his taste, to elevating his life. Is it, then, that he has devoted so disproportionate a share of that time to one of its uses, and that not the noblest, that he has lost the desire and the ability to devote any of it to its higher uses? Have young men given themselves to buying and selling till they have no interest in books, in Nature, in Art, in manly sport and exercise? Then surely it behooves us at once to change all this. No man can have a well-balanced mind, a good judgment, who is interested in nothing but his business. If, when released from that for a half-day each week, he is listless, aimless, discontented, it is a sure sign that undue devotion to it has corroded his powers, and is making havoc of his finer organization.

It is to be feared that many of our young men do not know what recreation means. They confound it with riot. Fierce driving, hard drinking, violence, and vice they understand; but with quiet, refining, soothing, and strengthening diversions they have small acquaintance. This is very largely the fault of the community in which they live. Do Christian families in our large cities feel the obligations which they are under towards the young men who come among them? I believe that a very large part of the immorality, the irreligion, the skepticism and crime into which young men fall is due to their being so coldly and cruelly let alone by Christian families. A boy comes up from the country, where every one knows him and greets him, into the solitude of the great city. He has left home behind him, and finds no new home to receive him. When he is released from his work in shop or counting-room, nothing more inviting awaits him than the silent room in the dreary boarding-house. He misses suddenly, and at a most sensitive age, the graces and unthinking kindnesses of home, the thousand little teasings and pettings, the common interests, and tendernesses, that he never thought of till he lost them. He is surrounded by men and boys all bent on their several ways. He must have amusement. It is as necessary to him as daily food. What wonder, then, if he accepts the first that offers? And if Satan, as usual, is beforehand with his invitations, what shall hinder him from following Satan? The saloon, warmed and lighted, and enlivened with music or merry talk, is more attractive than the dingy, solitary room; and if his