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The lesson which modern and ancient experience offers is that people must be as thoughtfully and as seriously prepared for their recreation as for their work.

The first illusion which must, I think, be destroyed is that a holiday means a vacation or an empty time. It is not enough to close the school and let the children have no lessons. It is not enough to enact an eight hours’ day and leave the people without resources. If the spirit of toil be turned out of men’s lives and they be left swept and garnished, there are spirits of leisure that will return which may be ten times worse. It is a pathetic sight often presented in a playground, when after some aimless running and pushing, the children gradually grow listless, fractious, and quarrelsome. They came to enjoy themselves and cannot. Many a boy for want of occupation for his leisure has taken to crime. It is not always love of evil or even greed which makes him a thief, it is in the pure spirit of adventure that he stalks his prey on the coster’s cart, risks his liberty and dodges the police. It is because they have no more interesting occupation that eager little heads pop out of windows when the police make a capture, and eager little tongues tell experiences of arrests which baby eyes have seen. The empty holiday is a burden to a child, and every one has heard of the bus driver who could think of nothing better to do on his off day than to ride on a bus beside a mate. The idea that, given leisure, the people will find recreation is not justified. A kitten may be satisfied with aimless play, but a spark disturbs mankind’s clod and his play needs direction.