AMUSEMENTS. 247 



it were — those that obtrude tliemselves upon us, 

 and grow on us slowly as the years grow fleeter. 

 Youth is always in a hurry to enjoy itself; it 

 wants to find out a thousand new forms of amuse- 

 ment, to exhaust the whole repertory of nature at 

 a single sitting. It must have balls, dances, pic- 

 nics, lawn-tennis, theatres, operas, entertainments, 

 concerts ; it must go to Newport and Saratoga, 

 Long Branch or Coney Island, as its tastes or its 

 means permit it. Youth must live forever in a 

 constant whirl of excitement; it must boat, hunt, 

 shoot, fish; it must travel, it must hurry, it must 

 scurry, it must whirl ; whatever it does, it must 

 never vegetate. It loves excursions, great gatlier- 

 ings, books, life, movement, the rapid joy of event- 

 ful existence. All meditative amusements it votes 

 "slow," and finds boring. If it goes to the sea- 

 side, it demands, not quiet and relaxation, not sea 

 and sky and sails and sea-gulls, but a crowded 

 promenade, a pier where the band discourses lively 

 music, and a stretch of yellow sands covered with 

 bathing-machines, nursemaids, minstrels, Jiired 

 donkeys, and toy goat-carriages. Like Blanche 

 Amory, it requires emotions. Nothing but life 

 will satisfy ife; and by life it means noise, bustle, 

 gayety, and visible crowds of like-minded hu- 

 manity. 



Middle age, on the contrary, has learned to reap 

 the harvest of a quiet eye from many things which 



