The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-12-29

\ 1LA1 IS actlVlty eXerbed TOT the pleasure of the exertion @@t @. ..; A It differs from work fin that work is activity exerted for some pleasure to result: from the exertion. -sa1 .a~r !
 Words, like people, have all sorts of rela- tions-some respectable and others that trail off into all degrees of disrepute. :
 One of the questionable relatives of Play is Sport. saa9o
 Sport is Play with "A list It is Play twisted abnormal, more or Jess of color. s~
 Play is found in its pure state mostly among children. GrOwn-upS, as rule, lose the art. Look out of the window any day, or pass by the school yard, and you can see Simon-pure play-children engaged in the games of leap- frog, fOOt-and-a-haf, marbles, hop-scotch, prisoners base, and pussy-wants-a-cOrner.
 Not one adult in five hundred has sense enough to take part in such pastimes as these.
 Having forgotten how to play, we have i'm vented sport. s.-., -.~ ..
 Play is fun; sport is alleged fun.
 Billiards, pool, bowling, horse, racing, joy . riding bear out the same relation. to real play that the glow of fever or alcoholic excess bear to the glow of skipping the rope. A..
 Play Is simple, natural, inevitable. Sport Is complex, conventional unrestful.
 Play tones the body and mind. Sport leads to various morbidities.
 Americans call it sport when fifty thousand Of them sit for two hours on the bleachers and watch eighteen men, at, work at baseball. Children would never do that They would not be happy unless them could climb down and get in the game.
 Neither could children be induced to sit up all night in a room reeking with the fumes of whiskey and tobacco and bet on cards; for this is not play it is species of neurasthenia.
 The reason modern adults cannot play is that they are insane They have accepted the absurd gospel of Getting On, which always produces insanity. The cream of their energy Is devoted to working in order to obtain mora money, finer houses, richer clothing, and more lackeys than other people have. They will sell their health of body and mind for precedence, pride and publicity. Those who fail talk suicide Those who succeed are ner- vous wrecks.
 It is the ambition of most of us to be finally idle. To have enough money to do nothing is our heaven here below.
 Sport is the play of the idle, and the idle cannot play.
 The canon of sport is fixed, as most of our rotten social notions are fixed, by the idle class of England who have perhaps done more to debauch the world than any class, ancient or modern. Fox hunting and grouse shooting lin the open anI drunkenness and gambling in the house are sports de luxe, with the hak mark of arstocracy upon them.
 PerhaDs the most terrible indictment that can be brought against the city is that it has plenty of luxurious clubs for the diseased Sport of nervOusy wrecked adults, and no playgrounds for children
 "The modern world," says Professor Fer rero, lis paying Natures price for the ex- takes the form of nervous diseases, madness, suicide, and sterility. Those who attempt to lead it back to a saner ideal of life render it service the need of which is best shown in the fury with which the ideal is apparently rejected.