20 
House & Garden 
IS LEISURE A LOST ART? 
W E are witnessing a peculiar phenomenon here in America, a 
strange paradox. 
In all parts of the country people are spending money on their 
homes and their gardens. New houses are being built and furnished, 
old ones are being redecorated. Plans are being laid for the develop¬ 
ment of gardens next year. Ask any dealer in these things and he 
will tell you that his production is months behind his orders. Ameri¬ 
cans are spending money on their homes. They are spending it with 
discretion but with speed. It is difficult to discern the motive of the 
generosity—whether they simply want to spend their money for the 
joy of spending, or whether, now that peace is an actuality, they feel 
justified in making their homes more beautiful and more complete. 
Whatever the motive, the fact is established that our homes and our 
gardens will be greatly enhanced. 
This is a healthy state of affairs. It keeps money in circulation, 
gives employment to a great many people and rather makes one doubt 
Emerson's dictum that on the heels of a period of reform or great 
national effort crowds a period of licentiousness. If our licentious¬ 
ness takes the form of a prodigal spending on our homes, then the 
homes will be the richer for it. 
But will we be the richer for it? In the answer to that question 
lies the peculiar phenomenon of our present day American life. Like 
the man in the Bible we have acquired a house and lands; can we 
appreciate them? We are laying out gardens and erecting summer 
houses, we are putting down new carpets and hanging up new curtains 
and arranging new furniture; will the speed of our life permit our 
enjoying them? Have we lost the art of leisure? 
N one of his essays on gardens, Dion Clayton Calthrop writes, “The 
art of leisure lies, to me, in the 
power of absorbing without effort 
the spirit of one’s surroundings; to 
look, without speculation, at the 
sky and the sea; to become part of 
a green plain; to rejoice, with a 
tranquil mind, in the feast of colors 
in a bed of flowers. To this end is 
a good gardener born. The man 
who, from a sudden love, stops in 
his walk to look at a field of but¬ 
tercups has no idea of the spiritual 
advancement he has made.” 
To that end, also, is the good 
house-holder born. The man who, 
from a sheer love of antiquity, can 
stop in his day’s work to admire 
the patina on an old piece of furni¬ 
ture; who can fling wide the case¬ 
ments of his imagination over the 
valley of romance that an antique 
cupboard shows him; who can halt 
midway in the stream of money 
making to appreciate the rare color 
and fine contour of a vase on his 
mantel shelf—that man is gather¬ 
ing the fruits of leisure. He is 
richer every time he permits him¬ 
self time to enjoy these things. 
The question that confronts us 
now is this—are we acquiring these 
gardens and these beautiful homes 
for the mere satisfaction of owning 
them; or are we acquiring them 
that our life may be fuller in ap¬ 
preciation ? 
The pride of ownership can 
readily become a besetting sin that 
brings its own evil rewards. We 
can soon enough suffer the nar¬ 
rowed vision and the close horizons 
with which the miser is cursed. If, 
on the other hand, a keen apprecia¬ 
tion of them accompanies their pur¬ 
chase, then the benefits will be 
untold. 
But—and here lies the crux of 
the question—we can only reap 
those fruits after the seed of appreciation has been given time to 
blossom, set and grow. We can’t leap up to it in a moment. We can’t 
buy it with money. It is a very personal acquisition and it requires 
infinite patience and time before we can really enjoy it. 
I T has often been said that great art flourishes only when there is an 
aristocracy to enjoy it, only when there is a body of laborers to 
do the work for others and afford them time to appreciate beauty. 
The spirit of these times is being directed against the abolition of any 
such leisured class. The Bolsheviki rises up on ever)’ hand to slay 
such an aristocracy. And, in nine cases out of ten, the aristocrats are 
to blame. The things they have acquired they have gotten for the 
mere sake of owning them and for the power this ownership gave. 
Enjoyment came as an excuse afterward, not as a reason before. 
Today these people are bewailing the fact that leisure is a lost art. 
Perhaps their type of leisure is. They bought their leisure. In these 
times a man must make it. 
T HE first step toward acquiring leisure is to decide definitely what 
things in life a man considers worth while. If he is merely look¬ 
ing for 7% investments, 7% investments are all he gets and deserves. 
If he looks for a few simple things and those good, he will enjoy them 
in exactly the same measure as he labors to acquire them. But he can’t 
have everything. He must make the choice, and having made it, must 
stick to it as a principle in living. 
This garden border that he plants, this orchard he sets out, this 
Chinese rug, this vase, this painted chest become part of him as he 
becomes part of them. He makes the choice to have them. He labors 
to acquire them, and in the laboring are sown the seeds of appreciation. 
Leisure, then, is not a state in 
which a man sits back and folds 
his hands to contemplate the glories 
of his possession; leisure is a very 
active state in which, as Calthrop 
puts it, he absorbs the spirit of his 
surroundings without effort. There 
must be effort, of course, but that is 
the effort of acquisition, of keeping 
that garden border perfect, of bring¬ 
ing that orchard to successful fruit, 
of living with furniture amicably. 
T HE second phase of leisure is 
the sharing of it with someone 
else. No man owns a house or a 
garden or a book to himself. Leis¬ 
ure can't be enjoyed alone. You 
must share the feast. That’s the 
baffling aspect of it. You no more 
acquire a thing than you have to 
give part of it away! It immedi¬ 
ately ceases being entirely yours. 
You enjoy it because someone else 
enjoys it too. Mere pride of own¬ 
ership is a contradiction in terms. 
This sharing is singularly purga¬ 
tive. It blots out the memory of 
the effort we have expended to ac¬ 
quire those things—the abnegations 
that pulled down a bit of Heaven 
to our tiny plot of earth, the sacri¬ 
fice of tobacco and clothes that have 
brought us those flowered curtains 
blowing in the window, the sweat 
and toil of days when we added up 
the long columns of the facts and 
fancies and ideas for which we’ve 
been willing to pay the price of life. 
So we come to the definition of 
leisure as an active state of sharing 
appreciation and enjoyment, a state 
where labor ceases its babble, where 
ownership lays aside its talk of 
mine and thine, and only loveliness 
is eloquent 
No, leisure is not a lost art to¬ 
day. It is a different sort of art. 
0 
THE VISITOR 
VER the sad, the piteous, rutted plain 
Drifts and drifts the long rain, 
And, perhaps, 
Comes and taps and loops in and taps again on the pane 
Rain complains—Time has taken the hope Rain once had —- 
“Speak to me, man,” Rain says, “I am sad, so sad; 
There is nothing hut pain; 
Speak to me, to Old Rain,” Rain says 
“Aren’t you, too, sad?” 
“Aye, Rain, Old Boy, I am sad, a long time sad; 
Young too, many years remain 
And I must finish them all who have never been glad, 
I, who know, too, very well what each will contain. 
Pity me, Rain, Old Rain. 
I shall never go mad: 
But shall sit here listening, enduring, sad, sad and quite sane, 
Chained, so I cannot go where I would; 
So pity me, I pity you 
Rain.” 
Thus all day long I sit while Rain 
And I pity each other- 
Poor two! 
—-Robert Nichols. 
