alrous games
or bodily exercises, as fencing, wrestling, running,
leaping, and others..... With such bodily exercises
one does not fall into carousing, gambling, and hard
drinking, and other kinds of lawlessness, as are unfortunately
seen now in the towns and at the courts.
This evil comes to pass if such honest exercises and
chivalrous games are despised and neglected.

[Illustration: WHAT SHALL WE PLAY?]

The feeling of harmony and _bien-etre_ resulting from play is, in
itself, a rare form of wealth for the individual and a blessing to all
with whom one has to do. Every social contact tends to become wholesome.
And who will say that the virtue of cheerfulness is not one of the most
delightful and welcome forms of philanthropy? Play, rightly directed,
always has this result.

Possibly no social work in America is more sanely constructive than that
of the playground movement. In the few years of its existence it has
made ample proof of its worth in humane and beneficent results; and our
city governments are hastening to acknowledge--what has been too long
ignored--the right of every child to play. It is only to be regretted
that the play movement has not centered about our public schools for it
constitutes a legitimate part of education. The survivors who reach high
school and college receive relatively a good deal of attention in
physical training and organized play, but the little fellows of the
elementary grades who have curvatures, retardation, adenoids, and small
defects which cause loss of grade, truancy, and delinquency receive as
yet very meager attention.

In dearth of opportunity and in cruel oversight of the normal play-needs
of boyhood, there probably has never been anything equal to our modern
American city. But the cost of industrial usurpation in restricting the
time and area of play is beginning to be realized; and the relation of
the play-time and of the playground to health, happiness, morality, and
later to industrial efficiency, begins to dawn upon our civic leaders.
If "recreation is stronger than vice," it becomes the duty of religious
and educational institutions to contribute directly and indirectly to
normal recreative needs.

But what can the minister do? He can help educate the church out of a
negative or indifferent attitude toward the absorbing play-interests of
childhood and youth. He can publicly endorse and encourage movements to
provide for this