Part 6 (1/2)

[3] p. 25.

[4] ”Public Relief and Private Charity,” p. 109.

[5] See Fourth Report of Boston a.s.sociated Charities, p. 38.

[6] Eighteenth Report of Boston a.s.sociated Charities, p. 27.

[7] C. S. Loch in Fifteenth Report of Baltimore Charity Organization Society.

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CHAPTER VIII

RECREATION

I have said that the power to defer our pleasures is a mark of civilization. There is another mark which, in this busy America of ours, is often denied to the well-to-do as much as to the poor, and that is the power to enjoy our pleasures after we have earned them.

Charity workers still underestimate the value of the power to enjoy.

They are likely to regard mere contentment as a model virtue in the poor, whereas that discontent which has its root in more varied and higher wants is a splendid spur to progress. Professor F. G. Peabody quotes Lasalle in naming as one of the greatest obstructions to progress among the poor, ”The cursed habit of not wanting anything.”

The power of enjoyment seems dead in many a down-trodden, sordid life, while in many others it wastes itself upon unworthy and degrading pleasures.

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There is a pa.s.sage in one of Miss Octavia Hill's essays that throws a flood of light on this question. She says that the love of adventure, the restlessness so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, makes him, under certain conditions, the greatest of explorers and colonizers, and that this same energy, under other conditions, helps to brutalize him.

Dissatisfied with the dull round of duties that poverty enforces upon him, he seeks artificial excitement in the saloon and the gambling den.

It is useless to preach contentment to such a man. We must subst.i.tute healthier excitements, other and better wants, or society will fail to reform him. In all the forms of play, all the amus.e.m.e.nts of the people, though some of them may seem to us coa.r.s.e and degrading, there is this same restless seeking to express what is highest and best in man; not only to express his love of adventure, but his love of social intercourse and his love of beauty. When we once realize that certain vices are merely a perversion of good instincts, we have taken the first step toward finding their cure.

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It has been said that a man's pleasures give us his true measure, and that to change the measure is to change the man. From this point of view, the subject of recreation is very near the heart of the friendly visitor's relation with the poor. We may have made a conscientious study of the family expenses and income, of the sanitary surroundings, of the work record and diet, but we shall not know the family until we know what gives them pleasure. One visitor says that she never feels acquainted with a poor family until she has had a good laugh with them.

A defective sense of humor in the visitor is a great hindrance to successful work: poor people are no fonder of dismal folk than the rest of us. When we come to recreations, friendly visiting not only makes large demands upon what we know, but upon what we are. Our pleasures measure us quite as much as they measure our poor friends, and, unless we have kept fresh our own power of enjoyment, we cannot hope to impart this power to the poor, or to give them new and better wants.

Granting that we have them ourselves, what {130} are some of the healthy wants that we should try to pa.s.s on to the poor? Taking the simplest first, we should try to introduce simple games and a love of pure fun into the family circle. I am indebted to Miss Beale of the Boston Children's Aid Society for the following list of simple games, so arranged as to include standing and sitting games for each evening:

FIRST EVENING. SECOND EVENING.

1. Hiding the thimble. 1. Stage coach.

2. Bean bag. 2. Buzz.

3. Dominoes. 3. Elements.

THIRD EVENING. FOURTH EVENING.

1. Hot b.u.t.ter blue beans. 1. How, when, and where.

2. Jack straws. 2. Counting buzz.

3. Fruit basket. 3. Magical spelling.

FIFTH EVENING. SIXTH EVENING.