cial sports can be had, then the
dumb-bells, the Indian clubs, and the foils become a necessity.

Everyone should become proficient in as many of these sports as
possible. These are the resources from which the stores of vitality and
energy must be supplied in youth, and replenished in later life.

THE VIRTUE.

+The value of superfluous energy.+--The person whose own life-forces are
at their best cannot help flowing over in exuberant gladness to gladden
all he meets. Herbert Spencer has set this forth so strongly in his
Data of Ethics that I quote his words: "Bounding out of bed after an
unbroken sleep, singing or whistling as he dresses, coming down with
beaming face ready to laugh at the slightest provocation, the healthy
man of high powers enters on the day's business not with repugnance but
with gladness; and from hour to hour experiencing satisfaction from work
effectually done, comes home with an abundant surplus of energy
remaining for hours of relaxation. Full of vivacity, he is ever welcome.
For his wife he has smiles and jocose speeches; for his children stories
of fun and play; for his friends pleasant talk interspersed with the
sallies of wit that come from buoyancy."

THE REWARD.

"Unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance."
The reward of exertion is the power to make more exertion the next time.
And the reward of habits of regular exercise and habitual cheerfulness
is the ability to meet the world at every turn in the consciousness of
power to master it, and to meet men with that good cheer which disarms
hostility and wins friends.

THE TEMPTATION.

+Excitement not to be made an end in itself.+--The exhilaration of sport
may be carried to the point of excitement; and then this excitement may
be made an end in itself. This is the temptation which besets all forms
of recreation and amusement. It is the fear of this danger that has led
many good people to distrust and disparage certain of the more intense
forms of recreation. Their mistake is in supposing that temptation is
peculiar to these forms of amusement. As we shall see before we complete
our study of ethics, everything brings temptation with it; and the best
things bring the severest and subtlest temptations; and if we would
withdraw from temptation, we should have to withdraw from the world.

We must all recognize that this temptation to seek excitement for its
own sake is a serious one. It is least in the nat