In companionship whose leisure interests are good there is a sense of freedom filled full and running over, of minds and hearts doubly rich, of good times doubly jolly.  But on the whole, girls have too little absolute solitude; there is scarcely a girl in twenty, except the “dig,” who is alone at all.  One trouble with dormitory school life is that it fosters leisure-wasting and time-wasting “gang” habits.  A girl so surrounded never wants to be alone a moment, either indoors or out.  With such, the blessing and blessedness of solitude should be learned, for solitude rightly used makes strong men and women.

The woman who has leisure has a grasp upon time, is master of it instead of being mastered by it.  It is the girl whirled around in a squirrel cage of pointless weekly and Sunday engagements who is oppressed and mastered by her lack of freedom.  And then there is the hard-pressed future; we must lay up some leisure for that.  The time when one is most hurried is the time when one most needs the sense of freedom.  The story of the old Quaker lady who had so much to do she didn’t know where to begin, and so took a nap, is profoundly full of wisdom.  When the old lady woke up she found she had plenty of time after all, not because she had done anything but because she had come again into a leisurely frame of mind.

Leisure means neither a blank mind nor an empty hand.  It means a holiday taken with an eager mind, with eyes keen in their delight and knowledge, with hands capable of some beauty or some use.  All of us have leisure to think, but not all of us think.  Some of us, if friends come in unexpectedly, will quickly pick up something and pretend to be busy.  When Watt sat by the fire watching the steam from the teakettle lift the lid, he was not precisely idle.  The powerful, indispensable steam-engine was the result.  One reason, aside from all religious considerations, why we need a quiet Sunday, is that we may have that sense of freedom which feeds mind and body, and even the crumbs of whose profitableness have made the world rich in great inventions, in great pictures, in wonderful books.

IX

THE OUTDOOR RUNWAY

After Nebuchadnezzar came in from eating grass there had taken place in that potentate a great change for the good.  One of the factors in this betterment may have been the grass itself.  The grass-cure has always been popular and always will be, for it is just as good for the tired mind as it is for the tired body.  Nowadays every big school and every college provide a grass-cure for students who are out at elbows with their nerve sleeves, or who have not sufficient muscle to make them fit, or who are overworking or need toning up in any way.  There is more and more recognition of the fact that a school course which is taken at the expense of health is not worth having.  And side by side with this wholesome admission has come a great awakening in the last fifteen years to the curative value of the outdoor runway, whether that runway be a field track, energetic walking in a park or campus, or a cross country run.