Recreation is as necessary as work. What kind is to be sought after, and what avoided? For health’s sake, if for nothing else, boys should have some kind of out-door amusements. A boy has an easy choice of good and healthy recreation, and therefore has no excuse for taking up with bad objects. Cricket, Rowing, Volunteering, and such-like, are healthy, and easily obtainable recreations. Gambling, drinking, loitering, are not to be thought of for a moment, they are the curse of the lazy and weak-minded. Theatres are very good if you keep out of the cheap and nasty ones. Music halls are much better avoided. I do not say that it is necessarily wrong to go there, or that you are certain to come to harm if you frequent them, but there is more chance of temptation, and an inferior entertainment for your money. Well acted plays may open out your mind, but the silliness of the music hall entertainment will only react upon you. You can tell a music hall frequenter, not by the words of his mouth so much as by the shuffle of his feet: his highest
ambition seems to be to dance the double shuffle, and perhaps sing a few verses of some jingling rhyme. Out-door recreation is not so easily attainable, in the winter, as the time at your disposal is so short. In-door amusements must, to a great extent, take their place. The gymnasium is a good institution; chess is a game worth learning, and very fascinating to some minds; cards are good as long as gambling is avoided, and many other games readily suggest themselves to one’s mind.
Reading will be more to the liking of many. Read books which are worth reading, not the penny trash which shops offer to the boys of England. I should hope that the boys of England have sufficient brains to care for something a little above the penny dreadfuls, otherwise it is a bad look out for the future men of England. Independently of libraries you can now get books, by good writers, as cheap as sixpence—Walter Scott, Fennimore Cooper, Maryatt, Dickens, &c. A word about books. Of course, in books by writers such as I have mentioned you will find many things spoken of which are wrong and ought not to be. They must write so if stories are to be written of life as we find it, and mere goody-goody books, which avoid all mention
of such things, are unnatural, and do not give true pictures of life. The harm of too many cheap publications, and not only the cheap ones, is, that in speaking of these things they make them appear unavoidable, and even worthy of praise. Good writers show how revolting crime and evil is, how they can be overcome and resisted, and how truth and honesty must prevail in the end. The difference between good books and plays and bad ones is not so much the subjects they write about as the way in which they speak of them. Some of the cheap literature is only foolish, some is distinctly wicked, but both are better avoided, and your time and money spent on worthier objects. Avoid bad company, and take care that your recreations are manly and honest.
HOME DUTIES.
As soon as you begin to bear your share in the expenses of home, you will naturally look to have your word in the arrangements thereof. From the time that you begin to earn your own living, until the time that you make a home for yourself, there will be certain home duties which you have no right to neglect.
First of all, you must be ready to bear your fair share in the expenses of the home. When first you go to work, you will probably be expected to bring home all your money, and have a certain sum given to you for pocket money. As you grow older, you will agree to pay a certain sum for your board and lodging, and keep the rest for yourself. Let your payments be such as will do a little more than actually cover the expense of what you have. Give a thought to the general comfort of the home, and in time of need when perhaps your father’s work is slack, be ready to increase your help, even though it may decrease your own personal comfort.
Secondly, you must acknowledge the authority
of the head of the house, and respect his wishes as to home arrangements, time for being in at night, &c.
Thirdly. Recognise your responsibilities to your brothers and sisters. If you are the eldest son you are bound to be the example, and if need be the protector of the others, and whether elder or not you have still your duties and responsibilities. A good brother is a great help to a sister, and her brother’s good opinion will be something which she will be very sorry to forfeit through any fault of hers. For your sisters’ sake specially you are bound to be careful that your companions whom you may bring home with you should not be such as would not be fit company for them. Your duties to your parents I have already mentioned, and the older you grow the more thoroughly you should carry them out, so that, as you grow out of mere boyhood, you may become more and more the companion and friend of your father, and more and more the comfort and support of your mother. It is a great thing in time of trouble to have one son to whom they can look without fear of his help failing them. It is far too common to see young fellows, so soon as they can earn enough