LIFE UP-TO-DATE.

Timaru Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 1777, 11 June 1895, Page 4

LIFE UP-TO-DATE.

The old delight m life (writes Joseph Hatton) has changed. Men used to have hobbies .for the pleasure of them. They were hunters and sportsmen, and felled trees, and climbed mountains, and stalked big game, and played golf and cricket, and a dozen other tilings for the sheer joy of the recreation. Nowadays they take to these things for health's sake, to work oft' the effects

of, ...high .living, or -the- strain of high thinking. Men who ride at certain hours iri the i'ark are tlui (i liviir brigade," and a similar ticket is ginned upon the principal men who play golf, swim, s.fiopt, travel, ride, row 1 , and go to sea. When' the bad^ weather' stopped hoise exer-: cisc iri the metropolis the liver brigade went to ; a place m Baker-strelet and rode dummy horses, .Ayhieh^ claimed to give them the same kind 1 of jolting as the genliineliving^animal. They had not ridden iri the jParkyou see or oh Hampstead Heath; for the ; love of the thing, but to appease a revolted liver. And so it is all round. Physical exercise is taken to make 'up for over-worker over-feedirig. 'Badly prepared food ard a poor imitation of French booking liaye a great deal to do With the abnormal demoralisation of the'inbderti liyeV, The table d'hdte of the new hotel and restaurant j the mysterious dishes, conpocted from tinned meats' Sand bottled yegetables.the ostentatioushess of the everyday menu, the utterly silly' recipes invented by writers who have ho knowledge whatever of cooking, have almost abolished the honest English dinner, the plain fish and joint, the simple confections, and the harmless salad of the national meni{. And so we all have livers and ride dummy horses, and row durhiriy boats, and tire ourselves with dumb-bells, and become the slaves of goji and, bicycles.