II. Recreation.

Given the rest-day, what shall be done with it ?

The difference between nerve-work and muscle-work shows at once that even Rest must have a varied usage to be rest for all the workers. What is real rest for one page 77 would be simply continued labor for another. Much more is the like true of Recreation, so much greater is the difference between taste and taste. What is recreation to one taste is direst bore to another. What makes one smile makes another yawn. What takes one early out of bed of Sunday morning keeps another late in bed. Now the State undertakes to be very maternal in this matter, and she is a mother who ignores the differences between her children. She treats us younger ones as if we all were like the good brothers two hundred years our elders. She says, "They did not, so you shall not, go to any show or entertainment, shall not take part in or be present at any sport or game or play; you shall not fish or hunt, or travel even, except from necessity or charity, upon Sunday."

Here we stand on surer ground in urging that our mother is quite wrong. I see not that the State has taught to do with the recreation that we choose for Sunday, save to see that no one interferes with it, and that we, by ours, interfere with no one else in his,—guarding between us in this day's pleasure just as it guards between us in our six days' business. There is doubtless danger, or rather there is certainty, that theatres bad as well as good, entertainments low as well as high, will seize upon the day. That certainty exists as to the week-days also. But there is nothing to warrant prohibition on the one day more than on the six days. Religious predilection has no place here. Feelings may be shocked on one side and the other, tastes may be annoyed, tendencies may be deplored; but feelings, tastes, regrets, of this kind, are private luxuries, and neither you nor I may force such privacies upon another as fetters on his action.