Fresh air contributes largely to the health. "In aëre salus," said the Romans; though some, for want of knowledge, have rendered this, "There is safety in flight"; and others, for want of the diæresis, have supposed it to mean, "Tip a policeman, and he will carry you over the crossing."
Yes, indeed, how wonderful is the air! Not only confined, as in aërated bread or waters, but in the open. By it we breathe and smell and sail on ships. Also the fields are full of buttercups. And then the weather! How much of true happiness depends on conversation, and how much of this on the weather! Yet "there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather."[3] This true thought has often helped me in a London fog.
Again, the open air suggests games and railways. "Games are admirable."[4] Did not Lord Nelson rightly say that the battle of Trafalgar was "won in the playing-fields of Eton?" He referred of course to the floods. Railways take us about through the air. Ruskin speaks of the advantage of increasing the "range of what we see," forgetting for the moment his views about locomotives.
Among other forms of recreation men reckon Art and meals and their wives' relations. I say nothing of the Drama, though the other day I came across the statement that "All the world's a stage."[5]
Another recreation is letter-writing. Lord Chesterfield wrote letters. But be careful. If you have written a cruel letter, put a stamp on it, lest it come back upon your own head.
I have spoken of a man's wife's relations. This implies marriage. "The wise choice of female friends is ... important."[6] "Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel,"[7] as a writer lately put it, thinking, perhaps, of the Elizabethan skirt. There are risks in marriage. It is "for better for worse."[8] This distinction is well brought out in the two following passages—"And oh! if there be an Elysium on earth, it is this, it is this!"[9] and "Wedlock's a saucy, sad, familiar state."[10]
One might throw out some thoughts on the question of selection, but, as a friend aptly and originally expressed himself to me—"Silence is golden"; and I remember to have read that "talking should be an exercise of the brain and not of the tongue."[11] Substitute "writing" for "talking," and "pen" for "tongue," and I really wonder why I have written all this. Can it be that I regard the reading public as "mostly fools"?[12]
[1] Lubbock.
[2] Don Juan.
[3] Ruskin.