Recreation by Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K.G. eBook

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 25 pages of information about Recreation by Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K.G..

Recreation by Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K.G. eBook

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 25 pages of information about Recreation by Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K.G..

But I do recommend some game or games as a part of recreation.  As long as I could see to play and had sufficient leisure, I enjoyed immensely the game of real or court tennis, a very ancient game, requiring activity as well as skill, a game in which Americans may take interest and some pride, because for the first time, at any rate, in the recent history of the game, an amateur is champion of the world and that amateur is an American.  The English are sometimes criticised for paying too much attention to games.  A British officer whom I know well, who happened to be in Africa at the outbreak of the war and took part in the fighting there, tells me that in one of the German posts captured by the British there was found a map made by the Germans and showing Africa as it was to be when the war was over.  The greater part of Africa had become German, and there was nothing left for the British excepting a small patch in the middle of the Sahara Desert which was marked “Footballplatz for the English.”  Football is a national game in America as well as in England, but I do not suppose that either you or we think that our soldiers fought any worse in the war for having been fond of football.  I put games definitely as a desirable part of recreation, and I would say have one or more games of which you are fond, but let them, at any rate in youth, be games which test the wind, the staying power, and the activity of the whole body, as well as skill.

Sport shall be mentioned next.  I have had a liking for more than one form of sport, but an actual passion for salmon and trout fishing.  Perhaps the following little confidence will give some idea how keen the passion has been.  The best salmon and trout fishing in Great Britain ends in September.  The best salmon fishing begins again in March.  In my opinion the very best of all is to be had in March and April.  In October I used to find myself looking forward to salmon fishing in the next March and beginning to spend my spare time thinking about it.  I lay awake in bed fishing in imagination the pools which I was not going to see before March at the earliest, till I felt I was spending too much time, not in actual fishing, but in sheer looking forward to it.  I made a rule, therefore, that I would not fish pools in imagination before the first of January, so that I might not spend more than two months of spare time in anticipation alone.  Salmon fishing as I have enjoyed it, fishing not from a boat, but from one’s feet, either on the bank or wading deep in the stream, is a glorious and sustained exercise for the whole body, as well as being an exciting sport; but many of my friends do not care for it.  To them I say, as one who was fond of George Meredith’s novels once said to a man who complained that he could not read them, “Why should you?” If you do not care for fishing, do not fish.  Why should you?  But if we are to be quits and you are to be on the same happy level as I have been, then find something for yourself which you like as much as I like fishing.

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Recreation by Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K.G. from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.