Year: 1861

Recreation is one of the best-aoused words
in the English language How absurd the appli-
cltions that are made of it, A man who has
been crooked like an interrogation point, over
some heavy book other, goes soemnly out
and cuts quarter of a cord of wood with dull
saw.


Strengthening up like note ofexclamation, he
returns to his affectionate friends and announces
that he has been indulgng in ''recreItioni" That
is, he has been making himself OUer, and has the
sweet assurance that he is another and a better
man, in the name and by virtue of-sd,oing
GOOD


Just as if the evil spirit of dullness would go
out of a man into a saw or a growing wood pile;
just as if he could sunder the thread of his thoughts
with the small round sticks he cuts in two.


Those who break away now and then, from Sc
dentary pursuits, let themselves down into long
boots and go hunting, do not always get what
they go for, but the cheerfulness, the life, the
mental elasticity they come back with, are worth
more than the powder they waste. A real tired
ache is sometimes luxury; it gives new value
u rest, and puts more than one feather into a
hard pillow.


Some mems heads are full of acute angled
ideas, every one of them ga fretful porcupne'
with one quill. Now put such a man on high
trotting horse; a fox, or, if nothing nObler, a
prairie wolf, in the distance and ten miles to
catch him in, and those ugly angles will be so
tossed about ana tr1turdteU, tnat YOU can nanQle
one of his ideas without gloves.


A good shaking has been known to rattle out
an atom of knowledge that rolled away, like a
bead from a broken string, into some dark corner
of a mans mind, and had been given up for lost.
We believe it was Tom Moore, whose verse came
o three days halt for want of a word. A rude
jolt in a rough going vehicle shook the missing
syllables out into the light, and so the encamped
verse folded up its tent, and moved musically on.


Exercise is something more than work; it is
working out; and the most natural question in the
world, waits answer; out of ,chat? Why, out OF
the old round of mans thinkings; out of the
mental straight jacket; out of the shell of self.
Amusement" diversion, ""elation," as any re-
spectacle dictionary will tell you, all convey and
most admirably, the exact doctrine, if YOU want
to be recreatei and be bran new, run atcay from
yourself. Be fugitive from the Muses. that is
from sober study, counsels "amuse," turn aside
from the old path, is urged in "divert;" leap out
of yourself, exclaims "exult;" at least be lifted
out pleads 'selate,' if you are too lazy to leap.


Such words, if one will only listen to them, are
as wise as a whole armful of "Physiologies u
They involve the precept, and tell you how to
practice it.


Some one has said, and rell said, that Gray:
young man of whom "some hoary headed swain
says,


Hard by yon wood, smiling as in scorn,


Muttering his wayward fsncies he would rove


Now dropping. woeful-wan like forlorn


Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love,
would not have been missed one morn ION the
customed hill, )" if he had understood the true
philosophy of recreation. Neither would his ep
taph have borne such line as this, if his dges
tive organ had been in good working order:


s-And melancholy marked him for her ownp