his own task. It
helps to save him from the mistake of supposing that it is his little
tick-tack that keeps the universe a-going. It leads him out, on off
days, away from his own garden corner into curious and interesting
regions of this wide and various earth, of which, after all, he is a
citizen.

"Do you happen to know the Reverend Doctor McHook? He is a learned
preacher, a devoted churchman, a faithful minister; and in addition to
this he has an extra-parochial affection for ants and spiders. He can
spend a happy day in watching the busy affairs of a formicary, and to
observe the progress of a bit of spider-web architecture gives him a
peculiar joy. There are some severe and sour-complexioned theologians
who would call this devotion to objects so far outside of his parish an
illicit passion. But to me it seems a blessing conferred by heavenly
wisdom upon a good man, and I doubt not he escapes from many an
insoluble theological puzzle, and perhaps from many an unprofitable
religious wrangle, to find refreshment and invigoration in the society
of his many-legged friends."

"You are moralizing again, Uncle Peter," I objected; "or at least you
are getting ready to do so. Stop it; and give me a working definition
of the difference between a hobby and a fad."

"Let me give you an anecdote," said he, "instead of a definition. There
was a friend of mine who went to visit a famous asylum for the insane.
Among the patients who were amusing themselves in the great hall, he
saw an old gentleman with a long white beard, who was sitting astride
of a chair, spurring its legs with his heels, holding both ends of his
handkerchief which he had knotted around the back, and crying 'Get up,
get up! G'long boy, steady!' with the utmost animation. 'You seem to be
having a fine ride, sir,' said my friend. 'Capital,' said the old
gentleman, 'this is a first-rate mount that I am riding.' 'Permit me to
inquire,' asked my friend, 'whether it is a fad or a hobby?' 'Why,
certainly!' replied the old gentleman, with a quizzical look. 'It is a
hobby, you see, for I can get off whenever I have a mind to.' And with
that he dismounted and walked into the garden.

"It is just this liberty of getting off that marks the superiority of a
hobby to a fad. The game that you feel obliged to play every day at the
same hour ceases to amuse you as soon as you realize that it is a
diurnal duty. Regular exercise is good for the muscles, but there must
be a bi