.38 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



EDITORIAL 



"There is Nothing to Do." 



In a letter appealing for financial 

 aid to provide an appropriate play- 

 ground for boys and girls, and for 

 young working men and women who 

 have no place for proper recreation, 

 Mrs. Elisabeth Milbank Anderson of 

 Greenwich, Connecticut, makes this as- 

 tonishing assertion : "Five in every 

 ten children observed out of school in 

 the average city are idle, — doing noth- 

 ing because, as they say, 'There is 

 nothing to do.' " 



This is a tremendously important 

 statement yet it is somewhat incom- 

 plete. Fortunate are the city children 

 if they are merely idle. It is better 

 to be idle than to be exemplifying the 

 old-fashioned teaching that "Satan 

 finds some mischief still for idle hands 

 to do." To the writer it seems that to 

 offer nothing but play as a substitute 

 for idleness is not enough. Boys and 

 girls, young working men and young 

 women are more than animals. The 

 exercising of their muscles on swings 

 or on vaulting horses, by playing base- 

 ball, or tennis, is not enough. There 

 should in addition be provision for a 

 proper exercise and development of 

 the mental faculties and the control 

 and regulation of the various qualities 

 known as the emotions. 



The question might be pertinently 

 asked, Why do five out of ten boys and 

 girls, young men and women do noth- 

 ing but play or indulge in idle loung- 

 ing? The answer is truly because 

 "there is nothing to do." It is unfor- 

 tunate that the training of the modern 

 school has for its greatest tendency the 

 strictly utilitarian and that the tend- 

 ency is becoming more and more 

 marked. The training of even a quar- 

 ter of a century ago was different, but 

 it produced results. It is deplorable 

 for these young persons if they have 

 not received some sort of training, 

 some sort of introduction, however 

 meager or imperfect, into modern lit- 

 erature and music. If they are de- 

 prived of these mental resources, they 

 are to be pitied. It is even more un- 



fortunate for them if they have not 

 been introduced to the entrancing 

 realm of the great out-of-doors and to 

 the myriads of attractions so freely 

 offered by Mother Natnre. Imagine a 

 country boy, if you can, with nothing 

 to do! During his entire school year 

 he looks forward to the vacation when 

 he may get near to Mother Nature. 

 He may not be a "naturalist," but he is 

 a lover of birds and fruits, of fishing 

 and hunting, of tramps over the fields 

 and of the thousand interesting things 

 that surround him. But here comes 

 your city boy. He has played during 

 all the spare time of his school year. 

 For his vacation nothing is left except 

 more play, or idleness, and idleness 

 means work for Satan. When those 

 boys and girls grow up they suffer 

 from a painful lack of mental resource 

 within themselves. Their mind is to 

 them not a kingdom, as it was to the 

 poet. All that they can do is to do 

 something that will pass away the time 

 and here enters the modern, inane, 

 treatment of the unlucky victim. But 

 we are thankful when we observe, as 

 we are beginning to observe, that with 

 sensible men and women these things 

 are becoming things of the past. The 

 modern tendency of back to the coun- 

 try, back to the shore of the "sound- 

 ing sea," back to a c'oser walk with na- 

 ture, shows that men and women are 

 beginning to learn that there is no re- 

 source for the idle, no cure for idleness, 

 except the resource and the cure that 

 nature will supply and apply if al- 

 lowed. It may be garden, estate, pets, 

 anything or everything: around a sub- 

 urban or a country home. 



It is unquestionably a good thing 

 to erect fine buildings in the name of 

 Christ, for athletics and games, be- 

 cause there are times in the year when 

 the young men who are members of 

 such associations have "nothing else 

 to do." A Y. M. C. A. building has 

 a good place in the community, but 

 when the physical activities therein are 

 limited to athletics and playing games 

 then those young men are not imitat- 



