Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1901 — Why We Need Hobbies. [ARTICLE]

Why We Need Hobbies.

Business is not inseparable from higher things. Men may be born grocers, but need not live only as grocers. Solon and Thales, wise men of the Greeks, were merchants; Plato peddled oil; Spinoza, the philosopher, mended spectacles. Linnaeus was a cobbler as well as a botanist. Shakspeare prided himself more upon his success as a stage manager than as a dramatist. Spenser was a sheriff. It might requlrn a rather strong wrench of the imagination to imagine sheriffs of to-day writing another “Faerie Queen”—but why? Milton taught school, as have almost all great men, Walter Scott, the wizard of the North, was circuit clerk and practical man of affairs; Grote was a London banker, Ricardo a stock jobber and Sir Isaac Newton master of the English mint. Paul was a tent-maker and the Great Gentleman an apprentice at a carpenter’s bench. “I practice law simply to support my seflf,” said one of the greatest of St. Louis attorneys—an attorney-at-law, not an attori.ey-at-polltlcs—“but my real life is at home in my library.” Thoroughly practical people need the help of hobbies to keep them from shriveling up—St. Imuis Globe-Demo-crat.