THE ENERGIZING OF PLAY.
Strenuous play leads to strenuous work.
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THE ENERGIZING OF PLAY.
Strenuous play leads to strenuous work.
Play Ball.
Scarcely more than a generation ago every American boy came under the spell of hunting and fishing; and there is no more powerful incentive
to laborious days, nor any anodyne so potent for bodily discomfort and hardship! A hunting and fishing boyhood! Such has been the chief source of human energy in this lazy world of ours, the chief basis of life-long habit of persistent and strenuous effort; and the problem of educational play is to a great extent the problem of finding an effective substitute for the lure of the wild for stimulating young people to intense activity.
The lure of the wild! Alas it is but a poet's fancy in this tame world of ours. But our boys remain as a perennial race of Wild Indians however tame the world may come to be; and fortunately they are not dependent upon completely truthful externals. The genuine Wild Indian becomes a sorry spectacle, even if he does not sicken and die, when he is deprived of his millions of square miles of wild buffalo country; but our boy Bill cannot have such an out-of-doors, never again as long as the earth shall last. Indeed he has no need of such a thing, for if his fancy is stirred by ardent playmates he will chase an imaginary stag around a vacant lot all day if only there is a mixture of earth and sky and greenery to set off his make believe--and eat mush and milk when the day is done!