THE UTILITY OF SCHOOL-RECESSES. 97 



tions of life. They can not always be held in their nurses' arms. They 

 will meet with accidents which, if they are accustomed to the games 

 of the play-ground, will not aflfect them at all, but which, if they are 

 not, will lay them up with a lame side, a sprained ankle, or a dislo- 

 cated joint. Falls and tumbles occur daily upon the play-ground, with 

 no injurious effects whatever, which would put some of the tenderly 

 nurtured in bed for a week. The play-ground is the only place con- 

 nected with the schools where children can become hardy : and this 

 element of hardiness has been very strongly marked in all successful 

 men.' It is not the carpet-knights who to-day rule in politics or in 

 business — no, nor in science or religion — ^but the men who have grit 

 and toughness, men who fear neither ridicule nor a crowd of rowdies. 



Take the boy who has a few companions to play with him upon 

 his own lawn, and who, like himself, are carefully kept from the soci- 

 ety of the rougher and more world-wise boys of the street, and how 

 is he to get any knowledge of the methods or the power by which 

 these others are to be controlled in after-life ? Yet this boy and his 

 class are those who in many respects ought to have a controlling influ- 

 ence on the destiny of his neighborhood, but, because he has no ac- 

 quaintance with the other class, because he does not know what are 

 their ruling motives, he is powerless for good among them. By 

 means of this knowledge those agitators among the people, like Moody 

 and Dennis Kearny, the leading politician in each town and ward, and 

 the organizers of strikes, have such power among the masses ; and 

 their lack of this knowledge is the main cause of failure of our citi- 

 zens' social-reform societies and kindred organizations which attempt 

 some very laudable reforms. As the boy is father to the man, so the 

 play-ground is the antecedent of the future society of the town or 

 ward, and upon the play-ground, more than in the school-room, the 

 leaders of the future are made ; there the boy must learn, if he ever 

 learn it, how to lead, control, and master the others — boys to-day, but 

 men to-morrow. The school-room is an autocracy, with the teacher for 

 autocrat and the pupils for subjects, but the play-ground is a pure 

 democracy : there each, in proportion to his strength, dexterity, and 

 skill, is equal to any other ; there the egotist learns his insignificance, 

 the rude boy gets his first lessons in common courtesy, and there the 

 bully learns that his ways are not approved. 



But the ruling sentiment of the play-ground must not be allowed 

 to form itself by accident : children must not be left to themselves at 

 these times. 



An out-door recess needs the controlling presence of the teacher 

 quite as much as an in-door one, and more than the ordinary exercise 

 of the school-room, and because this has been neglected is the reason 

 why some people have objected to it. Several hundred children, after 

 experiencing the restraint of the school-room, should not be released 

 upon the play-ground without supervision competent to suppress what- 



TOL. XXIV. — Y 



