XXXIV.

VOCATION, VACATION, AND AVOCATION.

Helen Mar. It seems to me, Dr. Dix, that there is more complaint nowadays against too much than against too little industry. Americans, in particular, are said to work too hard rather than not hard enough.

Dr. Dix. Yes, Miss Mar, there is wrong and ruin in excess as well as in deficiency. "Drive neither too high nor too low," was the sun-god's advice to Phaeton. "In medio tutissimus ibis." 1 It is not enough that the engine of life be amply supplied with steam; there must be a wise engineer in the cab to turn it on and shut it off as occasion requires. Without him the engine will either not move or it will rush on to its own destruction. Activity is indispensable to health and happiness; but it must be regulated by wisdom and conscience. Alternate labor and rest is nature's law.

Jonathan Tower. How shall we know when we have done work enough?

Dr. Dix. It will not be difficult to decide. The penalties of overwork are as plain as are those of idleness. Nature is a faithful sentinel, and she gives her warnings with no uncertain sound. The loss of cheerfulness, of elasticity, the growing sense of weariness which the night's broken slumbers do not dispel, are unmistakable warnings. If these are not heeded, others will come which must be heeded; if rest is not taken as a sweet reward, it will be enforced as a bitter punishment. It is not long now, scholars, before vacation. The old-fashioned advice was, not to lay aside your books. 1 Thou wilt go safest in the middle course.

Teachers and school trustees are wiser now. 66 'Lay them aside," we say, "and don't touch them again till vacation is over."

But that does not mean, Spend your days in utter idleness. Many students make that unhappy mistake. They congratulate themselves on having finished, for a time, their mental toil, and promise themselves the luxury of complete mental rest. They soon find, however, that rest is a luxury only while it is rest. As soon as the faculties have fully recovered from their weariness, if new and vigorous employments do not take the place of the labors of school, they find that rest degenerates into that ennui which I have already described as the permanent curse of the habitual idler. Nay, they find it even more insupportable than the habitual idler finds it, for inaction is in any degree tolerable only to powers which are torpid by nature or by habit.

Jonathan Tower. Then how shall we spend our vacations?

Dr. Dix. Spend them in such a manner as to give yourselves the maximum of rest, health, and happiness, in such a manner as best to fit yourselves for the faithful, vigorous performance of the next year's work. That is the best rule I can give you.

Jonathan Tower. But how shall we do that?

Dr. Dix. In different ways, according to circumstances, opportunities, tastes, and dispositions. There are few definite rules I can give you that will fit all cases. To those who are not actual invalids the only true rest is a change rather than a cessation of action. To the healthy mind and body there is no harder work than continued inaction. Each day nature supplies a certain amount of nervous energy, which demands an outlet in some direction. If it does not find that outlet it accumulates, and creates a growing sense of uneasiness few maladies are harder to bear than what is known as the Lazy Man's Dyspepsia.

In order to be interesting and satisfying, the employments of vacation need to be systematized as well as those of vocation. To depend upon the caprices of each day for each day's occupations will do well enough for a while; but soon the question, Well, what shall we do to-day? becomes the dreaded bugbear of each successive morning. Plan for yourselves, then, some sort of systematic employment that shall take a good part of your vacation. It matters little what it is, so long as it is honest, harmless, interesting, and as unlike your regular work as you can make it. This last condition is especially important; your vacation employment should be literally an a-vocation, a call away from your vocation. Your daily instalment of nervous energy will then neither call into action those brain-cells or those muscles which are already exhausted, nor will it accumulate upon and congest your nerve centres, as it would do in complete and continued idleness, but it will find a safe and delightful outlet through a different set of brain-cells or a different set of muscles.

Jonathan Tower.

commend for us?

What avocations would you re

Dr. Dix. Oh, there is a long list. Some of them Miss Sawyer has already mentioned. I believe she began with

READING.

To a student, reading as an avocation should be on subjects different from those he is studying at school. Should it, therefore, involve no study? We will suppose its sole purpose is to give rest and pleasure to the tired brain. What a delightful sound there is to that well-worn phrase, "Summer Reading"! What charming pictures it calls up of luxurious hammocks on breezy piazzas, or of shady nooks beside mountain rivulets! "I want something that I can read without the least effort," you say to yourself as you make your se

lection, "something that will carry me along by its own power." And so you gather up a score, more or less, of the freshest, spiciest novels, and nothing else. Essays you abominate; histories you eschew utterly; poems are a little better, but they require closer attention than you feel like giving in vacation: so your stock of mental pabulum consists entirely of literary caramels and comfits and bottles of literary champagne, with something stronger for an occasional intellectual ca

rouse.

Now, the natural and desired effect of healthful rest is to invigorate, to render brain and body better fitted for labor; nay, to give them a renewed appetite and relish for labor. How a good night's sleep sweetens that which the night before was a dreary task! Well, your summer vacation is over, your score, more or less, of novels have been read, and you resume your studies. How much do you find your mind rested, applying the test I have named? how much keener is your relish for your trigonometry and your political economy than it was before vacation?

Helen Sawyer. I have done almost exactly what you have described, over and over again, and I don't remember that my school studies seemed any more distasteful on account of the novels.

Dr. Dix. Neither you nor I can ever know how they would have seemed to you, if you had not done exactly what I described, "over and over again." Most pupils perform duties at school cheerfully that they could not be induced to perform anywhere else; the stimulus of competition carries many through studies that would otherwise be intolerably distasteful. Let me ask you how your long and uninterrupted courses of novel-reading have affected your taste for other kinds of reading? how do you enjoy an elaborate magazine essay, for instance? how do you like McMaster's United States or Macaulay's England?

:

Helen Sawyer. To be candid, I never read such things I have history enough in school, and magazine essays are generally altogether beyond my feeble comprehension.

Dr. Dix. Oh, no, Miss Sawyer, not beyond your comprehension, for you easily comprehend things here in school, quite as difficult and abstruse as anything in the average magazine article; what you meant to say is, that they are beyond your inclination.

Now I am not going to make an uncompromising attack upon novel-reading. If I should condemn it utterly I should only exhibit myself as a narrow-minded bigot. So long as the novel keeps its place, the good novel, I mean, it is one of the very best things in life. It is only when it usurps the place of other kinds of reading that it becomes a positive evil. But I think I am not extravagant when I say that, with the average mind, its inevitable tendency is to usurp the place of all other kinds of reading. Almost every librarian will tell you that the majority of his readers take scarcely anything but novels.

Helen Sawyer. Well, suppose what the librarians say is true, do not their readers find in their novels much truth, much valuable instruction, especially in regard to human life, motives, and character? Is it not the novelist's peculiar province to-to unveil the human mind and heart?

Dr. Dix. Yes, that is, or should be, the novelist's highest aim. If fiction were generally studied by the reader as well as by the writer with this object in view, it would justly take its place high among the fine arts. There are such writers and such readers. All honor to them. It is not of these that I complain, but of those whose motives are by no means so high or noble.

Love of narrative is a natural passion, and should be gratified to a reasonable and healthful extent; but it is a passion, the keenness of which is easily blunted by