Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/92

 ated the custom of working six days and resting the seventh was to forestall some fool man who would probably start the custom of working all the time and so eliminate vacations and reduce the general efficiency of mankind. Asa class, we Americans have too few leisure hours.

Of course growing boys need more leisure time than do other people. They are only beginning to develop concentration, their bodies tire, and they grow weary very soon of doing one thing, and so need a change; their high-strung nervous systems need relaxation, and they are helped in the development of self-reliance by being left for a considerable time to do as they please. One has only to see the pinched, white, tired faces of the children who are ground down by long hours of toil to realize how it dwarfs and stunts and discourages a child to have no recreation, to have no time in which he may do as he pleases. The boy with no leisure is robbed of his youth; and youth at best is all too short.

It is really astonishing, however, if one has never before done so, to discover just how many hours in a day or a week or a month one has at his own disposal—in fact just how much time one wastes, or idles away, or uses for one's own pleasure or recreation; and boys have far more than other and older people. A boy came to see me not long ago who was complaining because he had so much work to do and so little time in which to do it, so much drudgery and so little leisure in which to enjoy himself. His was the common complaint of young boys.