.' To these three objections
all the rest may be reduced. Each objection points to a prejudice of
very ancient standing, or else to a deep-seated ignorance of the whole
subject.

To deal with the first. It is assumed that recreation means amusement,
idle and purposeless, if not skittles with beer and tobacco, then the
music-hall with beer and tobacco, the comic man bawling a topical song
and executing the famous clog-dance. If one points out that it is not
amusement that is meant, but recreation, which is explained to mean a
very different thing, while a truer conception of what recreation
really means may be seized, then there remains a rooted disbelief as
to the power of the working man to rise above his beer and skittles.
It is a disbelief not at all based upon familiarity with the manners
and customs of the working man, because the ordinary well-to-do
citizen, however much he may have read of manners and customs in other
countries, is, as a rule, perfectly ignorant and perfectly incurious
as to those of his fellow-countrymen; nor is it based upon the belief
that the working man is imperfect in mind or body; but on an assurance
that the working man will never lift himself to the level of the
higher form of recreation, simply because the ordinary man knows
himself and his own practice. He desires to be amused, and according
to his manner of life he finds amusement in tobacco, reading, cards,
music, or the theatre.

Consider the well-to-do man in pursuit of recreation. He has a club;
he goes to his club every day; perhaps he gets whist there; very
likely he belongs to one of the modern sepulchral places where the
members do not know each other and every man glares at his neighbour.
There is a billiard-table in all clubs as well as a card-room. Apart
from cards and billiards the clubs recognise no form of recreation
whatever. There are not in any club that I know, except the Savage,
musical instruments: if you were to propose to have a piano, and to
sing at it, I suppose the universal astonishment would be too great
for words. At the Arts, I believe, some of the members sometimes hang
up pictures of their own for exhibition and criticism, but at no other
club is there any recognition of Art. There are good libraries at two
or three clubs, but many have none. In fact, the clubs which belong to
gentlemen are organized as if there was no other occupation possible
for civilized people in polite society, except dining, smo