SIR JAMES PAGET ON RECREATION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1620, 27 February 1884, Page 3

SIR JAMES PAGET ON RECREATION.

Sir James Paget, F.R.S., at the opening of tjin winter session ol llio Working Mcn'a l.'ollcgo, delivered an address on.. " Recreation," which lie said was a necessity ot our system. Every part and power of the human body, to he kept in full efficiency, required some raeasarc of exercise and change. The desire for change should be satisfied as though it was a desire for food or drink. There were three things which entered mostly into recreation—uncertainty, wonder, and the exercise of skill in things which were not of the ordinary daily work. Uncertainty was to bo found even in the mind of a boy when tossing his half penny into the air. He saw it fall, and the uncertainty as to which side would turn up was a refreshment to him, as being a thing apart from his daily toil. The same with games of chance, when they are played without the element of gambling. Fireworks, great plots in theatres, fairy tales, ghost storios, sensational novels, tho big letters on newspaper placards, any-1 thing, however fallacious, that created wonder in the mind of a man, refreshed him. In hunting, fishing, and the felling of trees there was an exercise of skill apart from, the ordinary labors of the day. He believed a great part of the occupation from which we derived recreation and pleasure was really the survival in us of instincts which belonged to some of our distant ancestors, Many were descended from persons who of necessity in their daily lives had to hunt, or fish, or clear forests for a living, lie supposed from his love of wandering during his vacation that he had within him a large portion of the true vagabond type. Those who had mental work to do ought to have some manual labor afterward?, and those who had manual labor should find recreation and refreshment iu mental occupation of some kind or other."