Recreation may be divided into games, reading and hobbies. Games occupy a useful part in daily life. Indoor ones form a pleasant way of passing the time, and helping to take the mind off work and everything else that tends to cause worry or fatigue.

Outdoor ones tempt people to fresh air and exercise, and thus constitute a valuable aid to health. And games of all sorts do one thing, they teach people to take a beating in good part. By games we mean of course the playing, not the watching of them. One game even badly played is worth fifty hours of looking on while others take part, even if they are experts and play vastly better than we could ever do.

Yet games necessitate having someone to play with, and there are many times in our lives when we cannot have anyone else to take a part. That is the great advantage of hobbies, they can be enjoyed in solitude.

Not that we have any wish to drive people to solitude, for there is nothing worse than being alone too much. Solitary people are very apt to become too introspective, and that is always a bad thing for their nervous systems. If people avoid the society of their fellow-men they acquire an undue sense of their own importance, and their own affairs loom too largely in their thoughts. Furthermore, they are liable to become depressed, and to develop that mixture of conceit and diffidence which is of all things most objectionable.

It is because solitude is inevitable that we are anxious to lay stress on those things which will effectually prevent that morbid introspection and make life brighter and happier. And hobbies fulfil both these requirements. There are thousands of people who are doomed to live in lodgings. They have no one at hand to join them in a game, and unless they have some congenial occupation wherewith to occupy their minds, life becomes a poor, dull affair.

It often happens, too, that those who have the privileges of family life have to depend on themselves for their own amusement at times. The other people in the house may be busy or disinclined to take part in any game. Besides that, games are apt to pall in time; you cannot carry them on indefinitely. Then it is that a hobby becomes a priceless boon. It does more than enliven solitude, it makes all the difference to home-life also.

A man returned home after a hard day at business, and after he had had his meal sat down and spent the evening gazing with a bored, tired countenance into the fire, a cheerful spectacle for his poor wife, who had also had a worrying day, and would have been glad of a little brightness. The boys and girls had even to be sent out of the room, as their talking made father’s head ache.

As he sat there his one thought was of his work. It was all he had to think about, for he had never cultivated any pursuits or broadened his interests in any way. And running the mind in one groove is, like singing on one note, a tiring occupation. That man was always tired, body and soul. Of late, too, he had had another worry, for he had found himself becoming more nervous and irritable, and with less confidence in his own powers. The dread had come upon him that he was going to break down. And as he thought of his wife and family, who would be left insufficiently provided for, it nearly broke his heart.

Twelve months later if you had gone to that same house you would have seen the table littered with prints and negatives. Blessed be untidiness, of that sort at any rate; it generally means, like the dirt on a boy’s face, that someone is happy. There were no tired looks now, and no sending the young people out of the room. Instead, everyone was cheerful, everyone talking at once, and as for father, you would not have known him. Even the children did not know what was coming over him, he was getting so jolly. His friends, too, and he had more of them of late than he used to have, were glad to meet him, instead of fighting shy of him as an old bore like they used to do.

The secret of it all was that he had been to a lecture on birds, and the lecturer had described the fascination of photographing them in their haunts. He had taken it up, and the result was that he had seen more than birds, for his eyes had been opened to all the beauties of Nature, and he had found the world a very pleasant place to live in after all. The fresh air and exercise which he had enjoyed whilst following his new bent had banished his dyspepsia, his headaches had disappeared, and he had forgotten all about the palpitation and vague pains and discomforts that used to worry the life out of him.

His nervous system had taken a new lease of life. He had lost all his dreads and forebodings, and had regained his old confidence in business matters. The old wearing monotony of life had gone, and his brain was alive and keen with varied interests, for no hobby comes alone, it invariably brings its friends along with it. And the more the merrier.

This welcome change in his manner of spending his evenings, the change from wearisome brooding to congenial pastime, had given to his mind the repose it had stood so badly in need of, and for want of which it had been slowly but surely drifting towards a breakdown. For the latter is due, as we have already seen, to a gradual disorganisation of the various functions of the body undermining the nervous system. And a hobby such as this, combining indoor and outdoor pursuits, does more than relieve the tedium of a tired brain, it invigorates every organ and tissue in the body.

And they not only act as a direct preventive of breakdowns themselves, but they are an invaluable aid to other forms of treatment. If a lethargic person is ordered to take exercise, it is a constant difficulty to keep him up to it, unless he has some other inducement. Get him to take up some outdoor pursuit, such as gardening or natural history in one or other of its multifarious phases, and he will have exercise in abundance without knowing that he is taking it. Numbers of men would be vastly better in health, too, if they had more exercise after reaching home, especially on winter evenings, instead of sitting by the fire until bedtime. If told to take up physical drill, they may go on with it for a time, but will almost certainly get tired of these duty exercises after a while. Persuade them to take up wood carving or carpentry, and they will get all that they need and a large measure of enjoyment at the same time.

Many a case of gout, dyspepsia, sluggish liver and such-like ailments in stout, plethoric persons can be cured by this means more effectually than by any other.

Or it may be that patients are ordered rest, because of some overstrain, or a weakness in some particular organ, as the lungs or heart. It is difficult enough to secure this rest in the case of a woman, but in that of a man it is wellnigh impossible. There is no more restless being than a man who is either confined to the house or unable to walk far. He gets tired of reading and playing “Patience,” and the result is that in most instances he moons about aimlessly, a nuisance to himself and to those around him. Once let him take up some hobby which will interest him, and the case becomes entirely different. He can take his camera and photograph places or people, near at hand or farther away according to his powers of walking, and can find ample occupation in the evenings or on wet days, developing, printing and arranging the pictures he has taken.

Or he can take his specimen case and spend whole days quietly hunting for wild flowers, birds’ eggs, or anything else he is inclined for, and obtain a vast amount of pleasure afterwards in setting out his treasures. Or he can do a bit of gardening, heavy or light according to his capabilities, and if he has a greenhouse he can fill up his time profitably when the state of the weather does not permit of outside work.

Hobbies have ceased to be regarded simply as a means of putting in time, and have come to occupy an important part in medical treatment. Consumptive sanatoria, for instance, present a very different appearance now from what they did some years ago. At that time the visitor was met with the pitiable spectacle of a melancholy array of dispirited patients, lying about in all stages of dejection. Now he sees men and women engaged in gardening and other outdoor pursuits, looking as if they were thoroughly enjoying themselves, which is just what they are doing.

The same benefit from such pursuits is found in all cases where fresh air is required, as in anÆmia, neurasthenia, etc. An outdoor hobby secures the fresh air, and supplies the best of tonics for nervous systems. And when breathing exercises are ordered at the same time, the easiest way to ensure their being carried out is to induce the patient to learn singing, which is the best and most agreeable form in which they can be applied.

As to the stage of convalescence from any illness, any medical man will testify that people who have hobbies get well very much sooner than those who have not. And in this case, as in all those of people whose lives and movements are limited owing to some physical weakness, if they have no such pursuits to brighten their lives, the incessant worrying and brooding are very liable to result in neurasthenia, which is the half-way house to breakdowns.

And for those of my readers who still retain the priceless gift of health, and wish to retain it, a hobby is better than all the riches in the world. It is independent of riches, too, for anyone can cultivate it, the poor as easily as the wealthy. More easily, in fact, for the more difficult a thing is to acquire the more we enjoy it when we have secured it. The man or woman who can fill their house with treasures of art and literature simply by signing a cheque rarely appreciate what they have got.

When making a start take up anything, it does not matter what. One hobby leads to another, and it leads to something else, which is one of the most potent aids to health. For no sooner has anyone begun a fresh pursuit than they meet with someone who is interested in the same subject. A hobby has been the means of the beginning of many a lifelong friendship. And a congenial friendship is the best remedy for the headaches and heartaches and soulaches with which lonely people are so often afflicted, to the detriment of their nervous systems.

For those who wish to cultivate some hobby to act as an evening pastime, and give the mind its needed rest, it is important to choose one that is a contrast to their daily occupation. If they work with their brains all day, they should take up some pursuit that involves manual exercise. If they are working all day with their hands, they are better advised to fix on one that makes a call upon the mind, without much physical exertion. They may start a course of reading, for instance.

Now reading implies either amusement or instruction, or the two combined, as in the case of history or travel. In these days both these subjects are presented in a form that is not only an education, but also a welcome relaxation to the tired brain. It is a relief sometimes to have our minds carried back to the ages, and realise that the troubles which beset us are just the same as those from which people have suffered right down through the centuries.

We can have all the pleasures of travel without the disadvantages—gazing at the ruins of some Indian temple without being suffocated by the heat, or wandering in tropical forests without being bitten to death by mosquitoes and running the risk of malaria.

Or if the eyes be too tired for reading, there are hosts of other pursuits which will render agreeable diversion to the mind. A husband and wife who spend their evenings, the one with music or some interesting hobby, and the other with her fancy work or French painting, are more likely to be “happy though married,” than if they sit in their chairs to a growling accompaniment of the day’s worries and a querulous account of the servants’ doings.

Life without a hobby is like a dinner without salt; it may be inoffensive, but there is a sad lack of relish about it.