Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/94

 tions, what would you do? Some boys would go fishing, some would read a book or build something. I know boys who would stay in bed sleeping most of the time and others who would not go to bed at all; some would play a game or take a trip, and some would do things about which they would not care to speak. It might be very interesting for every boy to think the question out for himself and to answer it.

Many people, boys and men, are quite at a loss to know what to do with leisure time and quite upset if unexpectedly they are confronted with an hour or two of leisure and are separated from their ordinary entertainment. Many are like the old citizen in an isolated New England village, who being asked what he did in the winter when the summer tourists with whom he employed his time had gone, replied.

"Wal, mostly I set and think; and sometimes I jest set."

Those who have not trained themselves to think, who have no resourcefulness when left to their own devices, are sometimes forced merely to "set," and to find little pleasure in leisure time and no incentive to thought.

Coming into Atlanta one Sunday morning not long ago, I had as a seatmate an intelligent looking man of middle age who was bemoaning the fact that he was to have an unoccupied day in a city with which he was not familiar. Only two possible solutions of the problem as how best to spend a tiresome day suggested themselves to him—the Sunday newspaper and sleep. Church, music, books, the