--(curious that
scarcely one mentioned reading!). It so happens that no one enjoys some
of these play-forms more than Bok; but "God forbid," he said, "that I
should spend the rest of my days in a bunker or in the saddle. In
moderation," he added, "yes; most decidedly." But the phrase of "play"
meant more to him than all this. Play is diversion: exertion of the mind
as well as of the body. There is such a thing as mental play as well as
physical play. We ask of play that it shall rest, refresh, exhilarate.
Is there any form of mental activity that secures all these ends so
thoroughly and so directly as doing something that a man really likes to
do, doing it with all his heart, all the time conscious that he is
helping to make the world better for some one else?
A man's "play" can take many forms. If his life has been barren of books
or travel, let him read or see the world. But he reaches his high estate
by either of these roads only when he reads or travels to enrich himself
in order to give out what he gets to enrich the lives of others. He owes
it to himself to get his own refreshment, his own pleasure, but he need
not make that pure self-indulgence.
Other men, more active in body and mind, feel drawn to the modern arena
of the great questions that puzzle. It matters not in which direction a
man goes in these matters any more than the length of a step matters so
much as does the direction in which the step is taken.
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