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They have no play-grounds; they amuse themselves with marbles and chuck-farthing, instead of cricket or hare-and-hounds; and if it were not for the wonderful instinct which leads all poor children of tender years to run under the feet of cab-horses whenever they can, I know not how they would learn to use their limbs with agility.
I do not refer now to the settle ment house, which I am ready to help make and maintain as the best in the country, but I have in mind a system to be carried out with the consent and aid of the municipal government, of play-grounds, baths, parks, places of recreation, and hospitals, for the benefit of the people, which will put our city in the very forefront of progress.
These reasons are: We have no proper play-grounds in Wilson Street.
Parks, pleasaunces, gardens, set apart for kings, are the play-grounds of the landless poor in the Old World, and perhaps yield the sweetest joy of privilege to some state-sick ruler, some world-weary princess, some lonely child born to the solitude of sovereignty, as they each look down from their palace windows upon the leisure of overwork taking its little holiday amidst beauty vainly created for the perpetual festival of their empty lives.
They have no play-grounds; they amuse themselves with marbles and chuck-farthing, instead of cricket or hare-and-hounds; and if it were not for the wonderful instinct which leads all poor children of tender years to run under the feet of cab-horses whenever they can, I know not how they would learn to use their limbs with agility.
That the schools should have a sufficiency of ground properly enclosed around them, for the play-grounds, and that no other natives than the scholars should be admitted within those precincts, except in the presence of the master, when relatives come to see each other; but that on no account should any natives be permitted to encamp or sleep within the school grounds. 3rdly.
All this is fast changing for us, and for the better. When I see young girls sweating from a good row or the tennis-field, I know that it is preventive medicine. I wish I saw how to widen these useful habits so as to give like chances to the poor, and I trust the time will come when the mechanic and the laborer shall insist on public play-grounds as the right of his little ones.
We can cut down the trees; we can bury the grass under dead paving-stones; we can drive brisk streets through all our sleepy quarters; and we may forget the stories and the play-grounds of our boyhood. But we have some possessions that not even the infuriate zeal of builders can utterly abolish and destroy.
But having made these easily, when I met boys about Bethel church, or any of our play-grounds, I entered the lists with them in the art of writing, and would make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask them to "beat that if they could." With playmates for my teachers, fences and pavements for my copy books, and chalk for my pen and ink, I learned the art of writing.
To the importance of bodily exercise most people are in some degree awake. Perhaps less needs saying on this requisite of physical education than on most others: at any rate, in so far as boys are concerned. Public schools and private schools alike furnish tolerably adequate play-grounds; and there is usually a fair share of time for out-door games, and a recognition of them as needful.
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