Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1877 — The Amusements of the Rich. [ARTICLE]

The Amusements of the Rich.

The folio wing is from an article by Dr. Holland, in Scribner for March: True amusement is of two kinds, viz., active and passive. The active and weary man and woman—those who exhaust every day their vital energies in work —take naturally to passive amusement. A lady of our acquaintance, engaged daily in severe intellectual tasks, says that nothing rests her like seeing other people work. For this she goes to the theater, and the play upon her emotions there rests, and recreates her. Indeed, it is the emotional side of the nature, and not the active, which furnishes play to those who are weary with the use of their faculties. This fact covers the secret of the popular success of what is called emotional preaching. People who have been engaged all the week in exhausting labor of any kind do not take kindly to a high intellectual feast on Sunday. They want to be moved and played upon. This rests and interests them, while the profound discussion of great problems in life and religion wearies and bores them. They are not up to it. are weary and jaded in that part of their nature which such a discussion engages. The emotions which have been blunted and suppressed by their pursuits are hungry. Bo every form of amusement that truly meets their wants must be emotive, ana must leave them free to rest in those faculties which are weary. On the other hand, the young, who are brimming with animal life, and who fail to exhaust it in study, call for active amusements, and they must have them. And here the parent is in danger of making a great mistake- Unless a boy is a milk-sop, he must do something or die. If he cannot do something in his home, or in the homes of his companions, he will do something elsewhere. It is only within a few years that parents have begun to be sensible upon this matter. The billiard-table, which a few yearn ago was Only associated with dissipation, now has an honored place and the largest room in every rich man’s house. The card-table, that once was a synonym of wickedness, is a part of the rich mans furniture, which his children may use at will, in the pursuit of a harmless game. A good many manufactured sins have been dethroned from their fictitious life and eminence, and put to beneficent family service on behalf of the young. Athletic sports, such as skating, boating, shooting, ball-playing, runnihg and leaping, have sprung into great prominence within the past few years—amusements of just the character for working off the excessive vitality of young men, and developing their physical power. This is all well—a reform in the right direction. Much of this is done before the public eye, and in the presence of young women, which helps to restrain all tendencies to excesses ana dissipation. The activities of young women take another direction, and nothing seems to us

more hopeful than the pursuits in which they engage. The rich young woman in •uiu. club, the drawing class, and kindred associations, employ her spare tunepandi now there Is hardly A more busy''person"' living than the rich young woman who Ik. through w.th her boarding-school. ’The poor, who suppose that the rich young woman leads an idle life, are very much? mistaken. The habits of voluntary industry now adopted and practiced by the young women of Atnenca, in good circumstances, are moat gratefully surprising. One of them who is not. so busy'' during the winter that she really needs a , recuperating suffimer, is an exception. Our old ideas of the lazy, fashionable gid i must be set aside. They are all at work at something It may not bring them money, bi&JJlmngs to them—the content that comes of an earnest and fruitful pursuit. It may take* the form tof amusement, tai trit r«wdte in aT adult in this matter of amusement, much is done for thMWill help to givp us a generation of older pen and women, who Wilt hot be content witli* the poor business of killing time. For it \ must be remembered thst while the young' ; women “ assist’?. dt the athletic games i<3'; the young wen,ths young men *rq India: t pensable to the rntellectUal associations M ‘ the young women.-*-They meet'together, and stimulate «bd lelp duttoofber it does not seem possible , rthat either party should eVer'subside ih'M'those thfieikWrs , ‘ who haunt the w, a* fistia thfongted aSfleiUBW .... .