Part 2

To his astonishment he landed upon the top of a coach which was passing at the time, and soon found himself perfectly at home, and began to enter into conversation with the passenger opposite to him, a very gentlemanly looking man enveloped entirely in a black cloak. He soon found out that the country into which his lot had fallen was a very strange one. Its peculiarities were thus stated by his gentlemanly fellow-passenger. "Ours, Sir," said he, "is called the country of Skitzland. All the Skitzlanders are born with all their limbs and features perfect; but when they arrive at a certain age, all their limbs and features which have not been used drop off, leaving only the bones behind. It is rather dark this evening, or you would have seen this more plainly. Look forward there at our coachman, he consists simply of a stomach and hands, these being the only things he has ever used. Those two whom you see chatting together are brothers in misfortune; one is a clergyman, the other a lawyer; they have neither of them got any legs at all, though each of them possess a finely developed understanding; and you cannot help remarking what a massive jaw the lawyer has got. Yonder is Mr.----, the celebrated millionaire, he is just raising his hat; you see he has lost all the top part of his head, indeed he has little of his head left, except the bump of acquisitiveness and the faculty of arithmetical calculation. There are two ladies, members of the fashionable world, their case is very pitiable, they consist of nothing whatever but a pair of eyes and a bundle of nerves. There are two members of the mercantile world, they are munching some sandwiches, you see, but it is merely for the sake of keeping up appearances; as I can assure you, from my own personal knowledge, that they have no digestive organs whatever. As for myself, I am a schoolmaster. I have been a hard student all my life, at school and at college, and moreover I have had a natural sympathy with my fellow-men, and so I am blessed with a brain and heart entire. But see here." And he lifted up his cloak, and lo! underneath, a skeleton, save just here! "See, here are the limbs I never used, and therefore they have deserted me. All the solace I now have consists in teaching the young children to avoid a similar doom. I sometimes show them what I have shown you. I labor hard to convince them that most assuredly the same misfortune will befall them which has happened to me and to all the grown-up inhabitants; but even then, I grieve to say, I cannot always succeed. Many believe that they will be lucky enough to escape, and some of the grown-up inhabitants pad themselves, and so cheat the poor children into the belief that they are all right, though all the elder ones know better. You will now perceive the reason why all the gentlemen you see wear such tight pantaloons, they pretend that it is fashionable, but in reality it is in order to prevent their false legs from tumbling out. Surely my case is miserable enough; my only hope consists in the idea of educating the rising generation to do better. No doubt it is easy to persuade them to do so in the country from which you come, but I assure you," added he with a heartfelt sigh, "that it is sometimes very hard to do so here. Nearly all of us, then, have lost something of our bodies. Some have no head, some no legs, some no heart, and so on; the less a man has lost, the higher he ranks in the social scale; and our Aristocracy, the governing body, consists of the few individuals who have used all their faculties, and therefore now possess them all."

At this moment a dreadful earthquake broke out, and an extempore volcano shot the gentleman who had listened to this interesting, narration right up to the crust of the earth again, and by a strange and fortunate chance shot him up into the very hole which he had been digging, and he discovered himself lying down at the bottom of the hole, feeling just as if he had awakened from a dream; and to his surprise, heard distinctly the voice of his wife crying out from the top, "Come, come, dear, you're very late, and supper is getting quite cold!"

The name of the country of Skitzland translated into the vulgar tongue is the planet earth, and America is one of the portions thereof. If we were to look round in a circuit of a hundred miles, how many of the Skitzland aristocracy should we find, think you? What a dropping off of limbs and features there would be, if the letter of the law of Skitzland were carried out! But it is absolutely certain that, this is in effect the law of nature, which does not act, it is true, all in a moment; but which slowly and truly tends to this. The Hindoo ties up an arm, for years together, as a penance, thinking thereby he does Brahma service; the limb with fatal sureness withers away, and rots. The prisoner in solitary confinement has his mind and faculties bound, fettered and tied, and by a law as fixed as that which keeps the stars in their places, the said prisoner's mind grows weaker, feebler, less sane, day by day. School children are confined six long hours in a close school-room, sitting in one unvarying posture, their lungs breathing corrupted air, no single limb moving as it ought to move, not the faintest shadow of attention being paid to heart, lungs, digestive organs, legs or arms, all these being bound down, and tied as it were; and so, by the stern edict of heaven, which, when man was placed upon earth, decreed that the faculties unused should weaken and fail, we see around us thousands of unhealthy children whose brains are developed at the expense of their bodies; the ultimate consequence of which will be, deterioration of brain as well as body.

What is the remedy for all this? I have before stated that in large crowded cities, gymnastic training, systematically pursued _as a study_, is the only thing which seems possible to be done, and most assuredly will be beneficial wherever it is introduced. But there is a different method of physical education, which can be pursued either exclusively, or in association with gymnastics, which can be followed up either in the country, or in towns, where playgrounds can be obtained. This is the method which I have invariably pursued myself, namely, the systematic pursuit of health and strength by all manner of manly sports and games. I myself learnt to play and love these games at school and at college. I have given them now nearly four years' trial in my school, and every day convinces me more and more of their beneficial results.

I cannot tell how much physical weakness, how much moral evil we have batted, and bowled, and shinnied away from our door; but I do know that we have batted and bowled away indolence, and listlessness, and doing nothing, which I believe is the Devil's greatest engine; and I also know that the enthusiasm of the boys in these games never dies out, their enjoyment never flags, for these games supply the want of the boys' natures, and keep their thoughts from straying to forbidden ground.

Now these games are the very thing which that portion of mankind called the sporting world, have always loved and cherished. They have infused the love of these games into the very bones of Englishmen, and who knows how much good England owes to them! Let us then overlook for a while the religious world, the commercial world, the literary world, for they do not contain what we seek now, and let us look at this poor sister world, a world which seldom finds itself in such good company.

Each of these worlds has its work; the one we now have to do with, the sporting world, is a world probably as much decried, and with as much reason, as any. But see how pertinaciously this world will persist in coming up to the surface wherever a community of men may be. See how rigorously the Puritans tried to put down, or rather _squeeze_ this heinous tendency out of Human Nature! But they did not succeed, though goodness knows, they tried hard enough. Yet it has come up again, and lo! it is now as vigorous as ever. Friends! I am finding fault with the Puritans in the very midst of their descendants. But what greater compliment could I pay these old Puritans than this? for their greatest glory is, that they left to their descendants the precious legacy of free thought! and so deeply imbedded is this in the very bones of the race, that they will gladly hear a stranger criticize and even condemn, a portion of the Puritan mind: knowing full well, that the fabric which they builded on the shores of this Continent is sufficient to bear witness to the real manhood that was in them. But what was the reason of their failure? Simply they were trying to drive out Nature with a pitchfork, and she of course will perpetually keep coming back. So we say of this world, the sporting world, so liable to abuse, and so unsparingly abused, what is true of all the worlds, and that is, that it would be well for mankind, if they were to bestow a little thought upon the demands of this, as well as of the other worlds; and not be content to ignore wholly a thing the value of which they do not understand;--how the sporting world has witnessed, does witness, and will forever witness, for a fact in Human Nature, which no amount of pressure will ever squeeze out of Human Nature, and that is, the necessity which human beings feel for amusement, and for open air exercise, not exercise merely, but hearty, joyous, blood-stirring exercise, with a good amount of pleasant emulation in it.

This, then, is what cricket and boating, battledore and archery, shinney and skating, fishing, hunting, shooting, and baseball mean, namely, that there is a joyous spontaneity in human beings; and thus Nature, by means of the sporting world, by means of a great number of very imperfect, undignified, and sometimes quite disreputable mouthpieces, is perpetually striving to say something deserving of far nobler and clearer utterance; something which statesmen, lawgivers, preachers, and educators would do well to lay to heart. My children, she would say, are not intended to be made working machines; they have capacities for joy, for spontaneous action, for doing some pleasant thing for the mere sake of doing it, without any regard to gain or profit, whether it be of money or anything else; and by obeying my dictates, they will find riches which they never sought for, will obtain gifts they never asked.

Why, a fast young man at an English University too often learns no good thing there, except to play a capital game at cricket, have a good seat upon a horse, pull an oar till he drops, and to have a general belief in the omnipotence of pluck! And I can tell you that is no bad education too, as far as it goes. I am perfectly well aware that fast young men too often learn other and worse things than these, learn to drink, and swear, and debauch, and to spend as fast as possible in riotous living the manhood and strength which God has given them. But this I know and publicly declare, that it is this love of manly sports which keeps the fast young men of England from utter corruption and decay. Such men, renowned in their school and college days as good cricketers, oarsmen or riders, were the men that made Alma, Inkermann, and Balaklava possible; who have just done battle at fearful odds on the burning plains of India, on behalf of helpless women and slaughtered babies; and those whom their strong right arm could not save, it was able to avenge! The iron endurance which they had gained in many a bloodless contest, stood them in good stead there, when all their manhood was needed, if ever it was; and over those that nobly died there, methinks that I can see the Genius of England weep bitter tears, and thus speak with deep self-reproach:--"Ah! sons of mine! loved and early lost! ye whom I could not teach, whom no one in all my broad lands could teach, how to unite the virtuous, wise and holy soul, together with the soul joyous and free! Alas! for me, that ye had to die, before I could know how noble ye were! that your cold bodies, fallen on the field, wounds all in front, and none behind, would be so many poor dumb mouths to tell me of the untold wealth which I have in my children, those very ones who too often are nought but shame and grief to me!" Dear, noble old England! if God will teach her this wisdom, her old heart will beat on bravely for a thousand years to come.

The preponderance of the animal, the bodily element, produces fast young men; and fast young men, and boys tending to become such, are the problem of society, the terror of the peace-loving, money-making world, and the scandal of the Educator, as he himself feels well enough his own impotence in dealing with them.

I have seen many an Educator who has felt that he ought to get at these young rebellious forces, but who does not know the way, and despairingly wonders why he cannot do so. Friend! I would say, no man can influence another, unless he has something akin to Him. What do you think gives these blacklegs, men of not a tithe of your force and talent, such power over them? Why, it is community of nature, interests in common. But what interests have you in common with a fast young man? You know nothing that he knows, you admire nothing that he admires; and until you do really get a community of interest with him, you will be wide asunder as the poles, and the fast young man will remain, as he has hitherto remained, the one disgraceful problem which modern education cannot solve.

If an educator or college tutor wishes to influence this class of his scholars, or if a clergyman wishes to gain the souls of this part of his congregation, the one most difficult to deal with, let him join with them in some manly game, and let him assuredly know that whatever true manhood he has will stand him in good stead, and nothing else: nothing but real vital religion, real nobleness of character will be of any use in the cricket-field or the row-boat; and this will hold its own here as well as elsewhere.

Once, then, establish a community of interest on any one subject with young men, and you open to yourself a door, by which all good may enter. Nature, dear friends, makes nothing in vain, and it is of such infinite importance that strength of limb, readiness of eye and hand, physical vigor in short, should be transmitted from generation to generation, that she keeps producing fast young men, in spite of the thousand excesses which they commit, and will do so, until the ablest and wisest human minds take the matter in hand, and see to it that this part of Human Nature has its proper and legitimate food, guided by mind, thought, and reverence, instead of being allowed to run riot in all manner of wantonness.

The sporting world, then, with its manly games and manly sports, gives us the means which are needed by the community at large for physical education; and the future educators of the country must be taught to love these manly games at school and at college, and then they will be able to disseminate them; whereas, at present, educators in this country are almost entirely ignorant of any manly games whatever. "But are not these games very dangerous," asks a careful mamma; "don't you find that boys get hurt very much by them? I have heard of some one who got his teeth knocked down his throat by them. Somebody else got his head hurt at shinney and so that was put a stop to, I believe, at Mr.----'s school." Such mammas, doubtless, put into the hands of their children some good little book, with a narration of this sort. Little Johnny was told by his mamma not to climb trees. He was a good boy, and generally obedient. But one day he was in the garden of one of his schoolfellows, who asked him to climb a cherry tree; he forgot his mother's command, and went up, but after he had climbed nearly to the top his foot slipped, and down he tumbled through the branches on to the ground. He cried very much, and could not move, so they had to put him upon a shutter and carry him home. The doctor found that his leg was broken; the pain was dreadful when he had it set, &c. &c.; the drama ending by Johnny throwing his arms round his mother's neck, and declaring that if he ever got well, he would never disobey his dear, dear mother any more!

The good people who write these edifying stories never seem to think whether it was wise for mamma to forbid Johnny to climb a tree. Monkeys are never forbidden to do so, and I seldom hear anything of their falling off. Poor people's children climb trees, and there does not seem to be an extraordinary increase of juvenile mortality on this account. What should you say if some hard-hearted person, myself for instance, were to say to the dear mother of little Johnny, "Dear Madam, you yourself, I grieve to say, were the cause of Johnny's accident; you have habitually prevented him from doing anything which would quicken his perceptions and strengthen his limbs. He must not soil his pinafore, he must not get his hands dirty, and above all he must not play at any games which make his hair untidy, or tear his clothes. In fact, you have forbidden him to do precisely those things which Nature prompted him to do. He has generally been very obedient, you say, and therefore his bodily powers have become weaker instead of stronger. Well, the temptation came, the unused and untrustworthy limbs were summoned to act, his consciousness of doing wrong enfeebled him still further, and made them still more nervous. He went up the tree, and the natural consequence was, that he fell."

This, in substance, is the answer to all questions of this class. I have played at cricket or shinney, or boated, since I was nine years old. During the last three years and a half, I have played at one or the other almost every day. I have played at shinney, or hockey, as we call it, all through the winter, through snow a foot deep, and when the thermometer was below zero; I have played at cricket in summer with the thermometer at 90, and I have never yet seen one serious accident. The fact is, that I have a theory that Nature loves young men and boys, and love to aid them in their sports. She sends her ice and snow to educate them and make them hardy, while we are sitting by the stove and abusing the weather. She won't let them be hurt half as much by a blow or a fall, as older people who do not love her half as well. She breaks the young one's fall, and herself puts the plaster on his little fingers. She is delighted at every conquest that these young children of hers make over herself, just like some big boxer she stands, who is teaching his boy to box. He feints and threatens and looks big, but who so pleased as he when the young one gets in his one two!

Again, the danger is little or nothing to the daring and courageous. The fellow that isn't afraid of the ball, is scarcely ever hurt. He defends himself with eye and hand. The coward is the one most likely to get hurt. I think that there is just enough risk in these games to engender a manly contempt for pain, and a bold handling of a danger. If the cricket ball were a soft affair, it would be a game for babies not boys.

Let us then take a hint from the sporting world, and turn to the use of the many that which has formed the only redeeming feature of a few. The good that these manly games do, should not be confined to a small class, but should be diffused among the whole community, for the sporting world has something to say to all of us. It rouses the scholar from his desk, shakes him, and tells him that much study is a weariness to the flesh, and that the fields are alive with song. Out then he must come, and leave his musty books.

It comes to the business man in the crowded city, and babbles of green fields, nudges Mr. Sparrowgrass with its elbow, and tells him to take Mrs. S. and the children into the country.

It comes to Mr. Fezziwig at Christmas time, and tells him to let the young men in his shop have a jolly time of it, put by their work, listen to the fiddle, and join the dance.

Ay, and the dream of those half-forgotten days comes over Scrooge, the miserly, miserable Scrooge, and wakes up something like a soul in him.

It comes to Colonel Newcome, and bids him go to Charter House School, and take his boy out for a holiday.

This same spirit came to the ancient Greek in drama, dance and game, and with him was set to music, and consecrated to the gods, to Apollo the ever young, to Pallas the wise, to Bacchus the joy-giver.

It came to the stern old Roman with his Saturnalia, when for once in all the year the slave and the plebeian might speak their minds without fear.

It came to the dark-eyed Hebrew with his feasts of tabernacles, his feast of the harvest and the vintage, and over his joyaunce a sacred shadow rested, as of One who was over these things, who both made and consecrated the joy.

Spirit of joy! Wide as the world! Offspring of heaven! That descendest with airs redolent of thy native home, and comest to give to the toil-worn brickmakers of the earth a little rest! Forgive us, foolish dwellers in the clay, if ofttimes we take thy festal garlands, and drag them in the mire! drunk with the wine of thy pleasures, we turn thy gifts to ashes and to mourning. Come thou, nevertheless! and stay not, turn not away for our folly, come with thy love-light, and smile-light, and make the whole earth green with thy summer of delight.

It were a theme worthy of the place and time, if we could sketch out the progress of mankind; to show how God laid the foundations of the human race in the barbaric ages, strong, savage human bodies being the stones thereof; how in due order, order as sure and stately as that of the geologic eras, arose the Roman and the Greek, the types of full developed body and mind together: how in the fullness of time Christianity revealed the mighty powers of heart, conscience and soul, which before were lying dormant in the human race; so that now at last upon us has fallen the task of developing the whole of man,--body, mind, heart, conscience and soul.

But my time, if not your patience, fails me: so I leave it as a hint for future thought, and will in conclusion utter a few words of courage and hope for mankind, which each event of to-day seems to strengthen and enlarge. Yes, it is no longer fitting, that for the future we should have few hopers and many fearers. Nay, rather let us all join hands to-day, and form a great Electric Cable of Hope, that shall stretch from sea to sea, from shore to shore.

For it is certain, then, that the planet upon which God has placed us, is absolutely well fitted for the development of the human race. The more Science investigates, the more wonderful seems the adaptation of Human Nature to the world in which it is placed. The more refined a man becomes, the more delicate his insight into Nature, the more satisfied, the more overjoyed is he with her exhaustless charms. It is only our sin, our folly, our ignorance, which perpetually befools us, and robs us of our inheritance.

When the great coming race, prophesied of so long, shall at last inhabit the earth, they shall see no more glorious stars, no bluer atmosphere, than we do to-day; the moon shall pour forth no more silver from her bounteous horn; the sun shall lavish his golden rays no more freely, than he does to-day. But yet the whole world shall be unimaginably brighter and more beautiful to that crowning race. And why? Because their natures shall be in tune with the outward universe; their eyes and ears, and all their senses, shall be unimaginably more acute than ours; their bodies shall be perpetual sources of joy to them, and their souls shall be awake to knowledge, truth and love.