PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 457 



of boisterous sports the coming night offers the refuge of rest and 

 sleep. For the same reason the compulsory somnolence of our Quaker- 

 sabbath makes Saturday night the Saturnalia-time of many Christian 

 nations ; the Sunday laws have reduced them to amusements which 

 can, and too often ought to, dispense with daylight, and in the larger 

 cities apprentices and factory-boys have the alternative of joining in 

 such night revels or postponing their amusements to the musical resur- 

 rection of the saints in light, for the free Saturday is unfortunately 

 confined to primary schools and a few private seminaries. In German 

 schools Saturday is at least a half-holiday ; i. e., the scholars are dis- 

 missed at noon, and at once make for the fields and woods, except in 

 winter, when the disciples of the Turnerhall assemble on the last after- 

 noon in the week. 



With our present helplessness against the lethargic influence of the 

 midsummer heat, the conventional time of the long vacations is well 

 selected, but, if a hoped-for diet and dress reform shall have taught 

 us to pass the dog-days with comfort, it would be more sensible to 

 divide the two months : four free weeks in June, in time for the first 

 huckleberries and butterflies, and four in October the best season for 

 a long excursion to the paradise of a primitive mountain-range, nowa- 

 days about the only sanctuary of Nature where her worshipers can shake 

 their shoulders free from the yoke of prejudice and escaj)e from the 

 atmosphere of hypocrisy to a higher and purer medium. For the 

 children of the poor every city should have a Kinder-park not a cere- 

 monious promenade, with sacred groves and unapproachable grass-plots, 

 but a public play-ground with shade-trees and swings. May-poles, gym- 

 nastic contrivances and a free bathing-house, and room for all the free 

 menageries and music-halls which the Peabodies of the future might 

 feel inclined to add. Inactivity is no recreation ; we should not spend 

 our leisure hours like machines, whose best relief is a temporary sur- 

 cease of toil, but like living creatures of the God who intended that 

 the joys of life should outweigh its sorrows. Let us provide healthful 

 pastimes, or the victims of asceticism will resort to vices dram-drink- 

 ing, gambling, and secret sins for even pernicious excitements become 

 attractive as a relief from the insupportable dullness of a canting 

 Quaker life. 



Ennui has never made a human being better or more industrious ; 

 on the contrary, the hope of a merry evening would inspire a day- 

 laborer with a good-humor and an energy unknown to the languid 

 resigiiados of our present system. The confident expectation even of 

 a. physical pleasure imparts to the current of life an onward impulse 

 that seems to react on the mind as well as on every function of the 

 automatic organism ; the first Napoleon, who enlivened the tedium of 

 camp-life with Olympic festivities, and did not deem it below his dig- 

 nity to make his own maitre de plaisir, could in return rely on his 

 men to endure fatigues that would have killed the barrack^slaves of 



