SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF RECREATION. 791 



unhealthy soil of ennui in a depressing atmosphere of dullness ; and, 

 as too frequent a consequence, she leaves school with a sickly and 

 enervated constitution, capable perhaps of high vivacity for a short 

 time, but speedily collapsing under the strain of a few hours of bodily 

 or mental activity. Now all this is the precise reverse of what school- 

 life ought to be. The only aim of most of the higher girls' schools 

 seems to be that of turning out pupils with a superficial knowledge of 

 a variety of subjects, with such accomplishments as they may be able, 

 by hard practice, to acquire, and with a well-drilled sense of the part 

 that a young lady is to play in the complicated tragedy of etiquette. 

 Now it is no doubt sufficiently desirable that girls, and especially 

 young ladies, should be well educated ; but, in my opinion, it is of far 

 greater importance that schoolgirls should leave school with the 

 maximum of bodily vigor that a wise and judicious nurture can im- 

 part, than that they should do so with minds educated to any level 

 that you please to name within the limits of natural possibility. I 

 should therefore like to see all girls' schools professedly regarded as 

 places of recreation no less than as places of education as places of 

 bodily, no less than as places of mental culture. And, if this is consid- 

 ered too strong a statement of the case, it must at least be allowed that 

 far more permanently beneficial work would be done by girls, both 

 at school and after they leave it, if more permanently beneficial play 

 were allowed. At present in most schools, with all indoor romping 

 sternly forbidden as unladylike, all outdoor games regarded as impos- 

 sible recreations for girls of their age and social position, the unfortu- 

 nate prisoners are restricted in their exercise to a properly prison-like 

 routine a daily walk in twos and twos, all bound by the stiff chains 

 of conventionality, with nothing to relieve the dull monotony of the 

 well-known way, and one's constant companion being determined, not 

 by any entertaining suitability of temperament, but by an accidental 

 suitability of height. Could there be devised a more ludicrous carica- 

 ture of all that we mean by recreation ? 



Do we want to know the remedy ? The remedy is as simple as the 

 abuse is patent. Let every school whose situation permits be provided 

 with a good playground, and let every form of outdoor amusement be 

 encouraged to the utmost. Schools situated in towns, and therefore 

 unable to provide private playgrounds, might club together and rent a 

 joint playground care, of course, being taken that the social standing 

 of all the schools which so club together should be about equal. Some 

 such arrangement would soon be arrived at by town schools if parents 

 generally would bestow more thought on the importance of their chil- 

 dren's health, and turn a deaf ear to all the qualifications of a school, 

 however good, which does not provide for the proper recreation of its 

 pupils. 



Of course I shall be met by the objection that, by encouraging 

 active outdoor games among schoolgirls, we should rub off the bloom, 



