Revisiting the Earth

by James Langdon Hill

Healing in the Pool

This illustrates again the health instincts of boys which they seek to obey without knowing the why and wherefore of the feeling that impels them to bathe often. Swedenborg had to have a revelation from heaven to enable him to catch a glimpse of his malady which he ought to have known by intuition. His nature was all the time complaining, and what an expression that is when men speak of their "complaints," when by pains, which are warnings, nature is reporting her grievances at head-quarters. But the heavens were opened and Swedenborg went into ecstasy over the kindness of the angel whose message to him was a warning not to eat so much. The body shows divine workmanship as well as the soul. When young we follow nature and the result is a red-blooded, vigorous youngster, and if, as we went on in life, we had souls enough to appreciate the free air and sunlight with their health-giving properties, which are so lavishly bestowed upon us, we should better reverence the temple in which the spirit dwells. A recent association formed in Boston for the erection of a monument to Franklin, used in the picture, on their certificate of membership, the figure of Franklin with a kite leaning against him and a view of the telegraph. The kite employed by the philosopher in his experiment is a plaything of the young, while the experiment it served to make so successful, is the last word in science when applied to light, heat and transportation. The picture shows the connection between our sport and the great realities of life.

And That Reminds Me

Play underlies the future responsibilities and events of life. Recreation has a direct relation to efficiency. I wish that some boys that I know would play a little more. To watch boys is to study their character. The story of a boy's life deserves to be written as well as the life of a man. A boy has been pointed out who on returning from school is seized and imprisoned in a back parlor with nothing to look at but his weary lessons. He is pining. His eye needs brightening. His blood wants reddening. An Oriental traveler, watching a game of cricket, was astonished to hear that some of those playing were rich. He asked why they did not pay some poor people to do it for them. The play will show itself in still greater riches when radical important work is undertaken and when an entire revolution in the world's methods is to be accomplished. Exercise, like mathematics, cannot be seized by might nor purchased by money. It is not true that every hour taken from a child's play is an hour saved. In some cases, where a boy is given a little time to play, it is done grudgingly. Thinking now of efficiency they hire, here, leaders to teach children to play. Vivacious representatives of the Young Women's Christian Association sent word through the little villages along the Volga that there would be games for the Russian children on the village squares. These refugee children had seen so many sorrows that they had forgotten that they were young. Whole towns turned out. They looked on in wonder. "Have you brought us bread?" they asked, as the games were about to be started. The spirit of joy had forsaken them and needed to be recalled. Little games of competition and emulation, that were mirth-producing and health-giving, gave the impression that "Some angels must have been at play." As Thoreau says of animals, so we may say of human beings, that their most important part is their anima, their vital spirit.

One of Life's Schools

When revisiting the earth I met on intimate terms a classmate. I was in and out of his place of business many times. He had plenty to do. Indeed he had too much to do. The distinct impression he made upon me was, that he was being hurried, all the time, a little faster than he could well travel. Hurry, if continuous, becomes simply worry under another name. Let a person catechize his own experiences on this subject: it will have a salutary effect. He drew me into a confidential conversation, in which he said, that he was not earning a good living and asked me what I thought of his situation. I advised him at once to take a vacation and refresh his mind. He was working like a quarry slave. A person needs to stand away from a house to see it. He needed to readjust himself. His mind had lost its spring. A little recreation would do him more good, than the same time in the treadmill. Sometimes you see that a man made up what mind he has, when he was too tired; it was no proper expression of him.

Loafing and Laboring

What was once play has become work and what was once work in the garden, wood-yard, and barn may now become play. A person can stop work and yet not have any recreation. When a person after excessive physical exertion is resting he is not recreating. You do not say of persons at rest that "they shout for joy, they also sing." After sunset, the lonely twilight hours, with Jacob, represented the accepted, needed rest and after that came the pensive reverie, the dream and with it the ladder and the angel ministration. In his own person, every one must have noticed, that after a period of rest, often as late as Sabbath afternoon, come the holy influences of the hour, the music that is audible to the fine ear of thought, the stillness, the purity, the balm. A man, who is busy all the time or tired all the time, breaks the curfew law of God. The evening concentrates the retrospect, also the prospect of our lives. If you are communing with a confidential friend you do not like to have any body else talking in the room at the same time. You want to become attuned, like musicians, about to begin to play.

Foibles of the Famous

These persons are often quarrelsome, in spite of the fact, that their constant employment is the production of harmony. It is the effect of play, to bring into harmony. This is one of its most benign results. A man, found to be out of harmony with the spirit of the place, or of the time, only awaits displacing. M. Protopopoff, the last minister of the interior under the old regime in Russia, told nearly the whole truth when he said to an Associated Press representative, who visited him in prison, that his crime consisted of "not understanding the spirit of my age." Mistaking the time, he became a worker for a separate peace with Germany. That man of the past is not as black as he first appeared, for he has at least this redeeming trait, finding himself out of harmony with the temper of his time, he confesses it, and incriminates himself, and does not bitterly criticise those participating in the advent of a new era, which is the common practice, under such conditions.