the novel is often the only place where these may be had.  Likewise, one may amuse himself with history, travel, science, or art—­even with mathematics.  The last is rarely written primarily to amuse, although we have such a title as “Mathematical recreations,” but there are plenty of non-fiction books written for entertainment and one may read for entertainment any book whatever.  The result depends not so much on the book or its contents as on the reader.

Recreation is now recognized as an essential part of education.  And just as physical recreation consists largely in the same muscular movements that constitute work, only in different combinations and with different ends in view, so mental recreation consists of intellectual exercise with a similar variation of combinations and aims.

Somebody says that “play is work that you don’t have to do”.  So reading for amusement may closely resemble study—­the only difference is that it is purely voluntary.  Here again, however, the written language is only an intermediary; we have as before, the contact of two minds—­only here it is often the lighter contact of good-fellowship.  And one who reads always for such recreation is thus like the man who is always bandying trivialities, story-telling, and jesting—­an excellent, even a necessary, way of passing part of one’s time, but a mistaken way of employing all of it.

The best kind of recreation is gently stimulating, but stimulation may rise easily to abnormality.  There are fiction drunkards just as there are persons who take too much alcohol or too much coffee.  In fact, if one is so much absorbed by the ideas that he is assimilating that the process interferes with the ordinary duties of life, he may be fairly sure that it is injuring him.  If one loves coffee or alcohol, or even candy, so dearly that one can not give it up, it is time to stop using it altogether.  If a reader is so fond of an exciting story that he can not lay it aside, so that he sits up late at night reading it, or if he can not drop it from his mind when he does lay it aside, but goes on thinking about the deadly combat between the hero and Lord William Fitz Grouchy when he ought to be studying his lessons or attending to his business, it is time to cut out fiction altogether.  This advice has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the fiction.  It will not do simply to warn the habitual drunkard that he must be careful to take none but the best brands; he must drop alcohol altogether.  If you are a fiction drunkard, enhanced quality will only enslave you further.  This sort of use is no more recreation in the proper sense of the word than is gambling, or drinking to excess, or smoking opium.