SPARE HALF HOURS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1679, 26 January 1884, Page 26

SPARE HALF HOURS.

By Henry Lapham.

HOBBY HOUSES AKI) HOW TO BIDE THEM.

Every sensible man has a hobby of some kind ; many men possess three or four, and he is best off who has the greater number. For just as the equestrian may to-day require to use a strong active hunter, to-morrow a soberpaced hack, the possessor of hobby-horses will to-day amuse himself with one light recreation, to-morrow with another of a quite opposite kind, and so will be able to give each a rest in turn and tire neither out ; while he who has but one hobby must be in danger of riding it to death, as the owner of one poor nag is certain to kill it speedily if he train it for the turf, and at other times force it when the fancy pleases him to drag a carnage or haul a waggon over jolty country roads. To-day perhaps the fancy may be for poetry, and, mounted on the winged Pegasus we are borne through valleys groen, where hidden brooks murmur sleepily, or over seas where foam capped billows dance to shores ten thousand miles away, or into that strange region of imagination where dreams are realities, and realities but foolish shadows, or enter the stately halls of Camelot, and view the blameless king with his knights encircling the table round, or veil our eyes adoring as " dark with excessive bright," the Almighty Father is shown to us by that bold poet, who dared climb into the highest heaven. Yet, times and seasons there will be, when the poet'a sweetest songs fail to charm us, and th,en we must trot out some other hobby. Perhaps it may be a turn for carpentering which we nave fostered till our hand has gained much cunning, or the art of beating tough iron into what shape we please, and feel like Tubal Cains as we swing the heavy sledge, or rowing for miles past green fields, drooping willows, snug homes, whose smooth-shaven lawns slope to the river brim, or mountains whose reflected crags and heights are shivered by the dipping of our oars; or seated on the swift bicycle we fly luxuriously — up hill, down dale — all through the pleasant green country side ; or like the greatest living statesman, we may love to swing with stalwart arm the keen axe, blow after blow re-echoing through the woodland, till with a shiver through all its branches, a roar, and a crash, the forest giant lies prone at our feet. In fact, any pursuit that carries a man away from the cares and worries of daily life, anything that helps to make him forget the anxieties and disappointments that are inseparable from the most fortunate occupations ; anything that will serve to lessen mental tension and restore activity to the jaded system, is a thing worthy of being encouraged. Idleness will not do this, for *' absence of occupation is not rest ;" but a complete change of work is the thing required. Therefore, everyone should keep a hobby-horse and be careful to givo it exercise once, at least, every day. It is surprising how refreshed and invigorated one feels after a short canter, although at the start, perhaps, one felt that it was impossible to endure the motion. A man feels sometimes so utterly done-up, so listless, so tired, that only to He still and rest is the one thing possible to him. Then he should make it a duty to mount his hobby and go on Boms excursion. The very exorcise of will, tho battling against ennui — a thiDg that is not, but very soon becomes, lazinesb — is profitable. But we must be on our guard against assuming that because a man is lying quiet he is therefore doing nothing, for, for all we can tell, ho is just then mounted on his hobby and galloping ib at the top of his speed. Do you suppose the Rev. Gilbert White, of Selborne, was idle because, instead of always showing hard-work-ing men and women that they were pilgrims to perditiou, and worrying happy children to repeat a catechism they could not understand, he spent hours watching the swallows circling round the church-e<wes, or peering into hedges, or wondering at the instinct and cleverness of the birds that built in the hanging wood ? The Rector of Eversley was a better man, a more successful teacher, and a truer Christian, because he sometimes left his parish and all its cares behind him, and spout whole summw

days with rod in hand knee-deep in rushes by shining ri 1 *- or- reaches, or foaming weirs cloee by some quaint old water-mill, or sprang from Btoneto stone, from pebbly beach to beach, manoeuvered, watched, used every art and stratagem, to secure the salmon he had hooked in some mountain stream ; or because when the north wind blew, he followed the hounds ; or because (if no better distraction offered) ho cut wood for an hour before retiring to hiß study to read, to meditate, and — to pray. The Rev. J. G. Wood is surely no profitless idler, because in leisure hours his'hobby carries him to geological gardens, aquariums, fields, hedges, rivers, and sea shore ; and he tells in pleasant, instructive fashion, all the marvels he has met with there, and tries to lead others, an he has hiroßelf been led,

To look from Nature up to Nature's God. If a man has deliberately to choose a hobby, let him select one that shall be as much as possible the opposite to the occupation in which he is daily engaged. Let the ssdentary worker go far away into the fields, lie beneath shady trees, stretch his limbs on conntry roads, and think only of the gaiety, the beauty, the usefulness of the natural world around him ; or if he please, leap, run, walk, thinking of nothing at all. While they who are engaged all day in active outdoor labour should have in the evening a bright room, a comfortable chair, and forget their toil, ia the world of book?, or pleasing conversation or some game. Even in the idlest moment some great discovery may be chanced upon, for we often find when we are not Becking, and Isaac Newton, when he lay down on the grass beneath the apple trees little thought that there he should discover the secret that would make him famous for all time. Aud Frankliu was only flying a kite when ha struck upon the train of reasoning that made his name as a natural philosopher. Any hobby, properly used, will certainly bring to its possessor mental refreshment and bodily health, sometimes, if conscientiously and vigorously worked will carry its rider far up the steep hill of Fame, and set him where all the world may gaze upon him and admire. I have not the least doubt that Sir John Lubbock is an excellent and thorough man of business ; there will not be a single department of the great banking business under his control with whose minutest detail he is unacquainted, but when business hours are past, his hobby takes him into the country, or round his garden, or through his shrubberies, and there he amassed that wide, intimate, and scientific acquaintance with the ways and habits of insects which he has given to the world in his charming books. Any one who saw Darwin with his worms might be inclined to sneer, but what secrets and wonders did he not make known about them ! Moreover, the Btudy of Nature was Darwin's business ; very likely his hobby was something very much the reverse — some manual labour that exercised his muscles and let his brain rest. But Hugh Miller, when his hands were cut with sharp Btones, his body weary with long labour, himself half starved by eating bad oatmeal, yet could find comfort, forgetfulneßs, and intense epjoyment by sallying forth into the wilds—

The fields his study, Nature was his book.

He says of his early pleasures : " When the task of the day was over and I walked out amid the fields and woods to enjoy the cool of the evening, it was then I was truly happy." If only he had continued thus to alternate physical and mental labour we, perhaps, should not have had to mourn the rash act that prematurely cut short the life of one of the truest, shrewdest, and most .gifted of all modern Scotchmen.

But if ever there were an example of a hobby carrying its rider away from care and privation, taking him where there were pleasures and interests so absorbing that it makes one almost envious to read of them, and finally gaining for him a name world-famous, and Betting him in a position suitable to his perseverance and remarkable attainments, it was in the case of Thomas Edward, the Banff naturalist, a poor " souter," a cobbler, making at most 15s a week. He might have lived, as thousands of his class do, a life of squalid misery, working from six in the morning to nine at night, his sole idea ,of pleasure a dram of whisky now and then, or a rowdy dance in some low drinking-shop. But [Edwards possessed a hobby, or it would be more correct to say, the hobby possessed him, for he was only four years old when he tried to leap from his mother's arms t<* catch the flies upon a window, and from that time forward, through 60 long years, the study of Nature was his one delight, the passion of his life. After his long hours of work, through midnight till dawn, in chill spring mornings, at meal times, every spare moment he was among "his beasties." The great mother, Nature, was good to the child that loved her so devotedly. She lead him to her hidden green recesses, and showed him marvellous things ; she soothed his rugged childhood with tales "stranger than aught of fairy lore;" she whispered her secrets to his ear, and trained it to distinguish the bark of the roe-deer, the bleak, bleak of the hare, the fox's bark, the badger's snarling grunt, and the field-mice as they lilt a low and not unmusical ditty, for hours together." He knew that it was the skylark that sings the morning welcome to the rising sun, while the corn-bunting pipes the requiem to the dying day. Nor was this the only recompense Dame Nature bestowed upon this indefatigable student. Here are tho words of Mrs Edward to prove that her husband's hobby acted as a shield against temptation, and a preventative against vice. She said, " Weel he took such an interest in beasts that I didna compleen. Shoemakers were then a very drucken set, but his beasts keepi't him frae them. My man's been a sober man all his life, and he never neglecit his work, sac I let him be." Let any one who wish to possess the story of an energetic, talented, wonderfully persevering man, purchase the "Life of Thomas Edward." Yet, it needs no proof that the study of natural history is one of the most desirable hobbies a man can take up. For he who can read ever so little "in Nature's infinite book of secrecy" will find occupation and instruction for every leisure hour. Time will never hang heavily on his hands, nor care press too weightily, nor life grow wearisome to the man who finds " tongues fn the trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."

— A young man who played his first game of base ball last week, told the doctor who sewed up his lip and glued his ear together with court plaster, that he hadn't had so much fun since he was kicked on the spine by a mule.— Norrißtown Herald.

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