MOTHERS’ COLUMN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIII, Issue II, 14 July 1894, Page 44

MOTHERS’ COLUMN.

HOLIDAY AMUSEMENTS FOB BOYS. How glad you must be to have the children all at home from school for a time. Their clear voices and untiring energy keep the place alive. Sometimes a little too much so, perhaps. But although it is right that children, and boys especially, should have a real good holiday time, with plenty of fun and exercise, and though I think holiday tasks a very mistaken idea, still the holiday will be none the less a holiday and a playtime, but a very much more profitable one if a boy (or a girl, either, for that matter) is allowed, for instance, to have a few lessons from a skilled workman in the branch of mechanical work that he has a special aptitude or fondness for, and in exercising this new found knowledge in leisure moments or on wet days. He may find even a chance acquirement like this of great use to him in after life, and things like these he could not otherwise have any chance of learning during his school life. If, as some of our greatest men think, the best and healthiest form of rest and relaxation is a change of work, this would form a capital alternative to lessons and brain work, and might be classed with cricket, football, fishing, etc., any of which are not to be excelled in except by dint of really hard work, as any schoolboy knows. As a schoolboy friend of mine once closed an argument by saying, when he had got somewhat beyond his depth, • It’s pleasure when we like it, it’s work when we don’t !’

Another thing, too, for preventing the employment of ‘ idle hands ’ in the holidays by a certain personage we know of, is to allow the boys to earn the money for a coveted bicycle, or watch, or camera, or whatever he has set his boyish heart on at the moment, by doing a certain amount of healthy, muscular work, which will at once be of real use, and exercise the muscles and the qualities of patience, determination, and conscientiousness. A boy will appreciate 5s and what it will buy infinitely more if he has weeded a garden for it, or chopped a certain quantity of wood, or built a hen house, or ma le and put up a set of new clothes pegs and lines, or whitewashed a wall, or painted a cupboard, or done any one of half a hundred other things I could name, than if it is given him for nothing. Of course the work should be light, remember it is holiday-time, and work will be plenty and hard enough by and-bye when school life is over, but utter idleness only varied by aimless and unproductive amusement was never good for any boy or girl yet ! Our old family doctor firmly believed in this method of training bis boys, and I can assure you it was a perfect success as far as I could judge. Of course they had each, in proportion to their age, a small allowance of pocket money, and this continued both at school and in the holidays, but during the holidays if they wanted any more for any purpose they had to give some equivalent in work for it. Various things that they might do if they so wished had a market value attached to it, so that they could tell just how much work they had to do to earn a certain amount. For instance, I remember if they chose to

get up early in the morning and walk about two or three miles to some meadows where mushrooms were to be found, they could furnish the family breakfast table, or luncheon table, at the rate of 6d a plate. Plenty of wood and a sharp hatchet were always at hand in an onthouse, and bundles of wood at Id each were always accepted and paid for by the kitchen, or rather a slip of paper with the number of bundles on it, endorsed by the cook or some other authority, was always honoured by the doctor himself with cash down. He showed me once quite a collection of these curious little documents, and I laughed heartily over them. Some were endorsed by the cook, some by the coachman, some by the boys’ mother, and some by the doctor’s assistant, according to the nature of the work I The boys themselves liked the system and seemed to enjoy it immensely, and I am sure it was good for them in every way.