Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/42

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
28
TIME AND TIDE.

taste for cleanliness and fresh air is one of the final attainments of humanity. There are now not many European gentlemen even in the highest classes, who have a pure and right love of fresh air. They would put the filth of tobacco even into the first breeze of a May morning.

19. But there are better things even than these, which one may want. Grant that one has good food, clothes, lodging, and breathing, is that all the pay one ought to have for one's work? Wholesome means of existence and nothing more? Enough, perhaps, you think, if everybody could get these. It may be so; I will not, at this moment, dispute it; nevertheless, I will boldly say that you should sometimes want more than these; and for one of many things more, you should want occasionally to be amused!

You know, the upper classes, most of them, want to be amused all day long. They think


"One moment amused a misery
Not made for feeble men."

Perhaps you have been in the habit of despising them for this; and thinking how