Excerpt from Public Recreation Facilities Herbert Spencer, in an address in New York City, said, Exclu sive devotion to work has the result that amusements cease to please; and when recreation becomes imperative life becomes dreary from lack Of its sole interest, - the interest in business. Life is not for learning, nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life. In brief, I may say that we have had somewhat too much of the gospel Of work. It is time to preach the gospel Of relaxation. Something like this is the Observation Of nearly every thoughtful visitor to the United States. NO characteristics Of the American people are more striking than the habit Of excessive work, a whole lifetime of horrid industry, as Bagehot says, and our ignorance Of the place of recreation and relaxation in a long, well-ordered and efficient life. It may seem to readers Of this number Of the annals that we have made in recent years, and are now making, great progress in our public provision for recreation. We are, and yet, compared with the countries Of Europe, the United States is still far behind both in the facilities that it possesses and in the way in which it utilizes them. It may be questioned whether the present increase of facilities for recreation greatly exceeds the increase in demand. Especially is this true with regard to children. The restoration Of their rights to play is proceeding, but proceeding too slowly. It needs to be more widely recognized that play as a form of recreation is indispensable. There is still too much anxiety, too much greed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.