The public schoolboy who has eight weeks’ vacation, and this year an extra week, will hardly be happy if he acquires habits of loafing at the seaside shows or picks up acquaintance with despisers of knowledge, or comes to think that learning is a “grind,” and he certainly will not in after years bless his holiday givers. The workman who obtains holidays and shorter hours will hardly be the better if he spends them in eating and sleeping, or in exciting himself over a match or race where he does not even understand the skill, or in watching an entertainment which calls for no effort of his mind. Rich people, who can do what they like in the time they themselves choose, add excitement to excitement; they invent new methods of expenditure; they go at increasing speed from place to place; they come nearer and nearer to the brinks of vice; they have what they like; and yet, like the millionaire in the American tale, they are not happy. People need to be taught the use of leisure. The question is, how is such teaching practicable?... I would offer two suggestions: one which may be applied to the schools of the rich and of the poor, and the other to the free provision of means of recreation:-- 1. As to schools. The authorities may, it seems to me, keep in mind the fact that the children are meant to enjoy life as well as to make a living. Enjoyment comes largely by the use of the power of imagination. We enjoy ourselves before the beauty of nature, before a work of art, in listening to music, and in imagining the life of other climes and countries. How little is done in any school to develop this power of imagination! The great public schools, though often they are established in buildings of much beauty, rarely do anything to develop in the boys any understanding of the beauty. There is but little art in the schoolrooms and little attempt to teach the value of pictures. There are few flowers about the windows and very often the time given to music is grudged by the chief authorities. The elementary schools have not even the advantage of beauty in their buildings, and although the children may be taught art, they have their lessons in rooms made ugly by decorations, or wearying by untidiness. What wonder is it that boys and girls become destructive of the beauty in the admiration of which they and others might have found pleasure?