There are many other subjects for recreation.  I cannot even mention them all, much less discuss any of them adequately.  But I must mention for a high place in recreation the pleasure of gardening, if you are fond of it.  Bacon says, “God Almighty first planted a garden, and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.”  It is one of those pleasures which follow the law of increasing and not of diminishing returns.  The more you develop it and the more you know about it, the more absorbing is the interest of it.  There is no season of the year at which the interest ceases and no time of life, so long as sight remains, at which we are too old to enjoy it.

I have now mentioned games, sport, and gardening.  No one perhaps has time or opportunity to enjoy all three to the full.  A few people may have sufficient range of temperament to care for all three, but many people—­I would say most people—­who have opportunity may find, at any rate in one of them, something that will contribute to their happiness.  I will pass now to a subject which is more important still.

Books are the greatest and the most satisfactory of recreations.  I mean the use of books for pleasure.  Without books, without having acquired the power of reading for pleasure, none of us can be independent, but if we can read we have a sure defence against boredom in solitude.  If we have not that defence, we are dependent on the charity of family, friends, or even strangers, to save us from boredom; but if we can find delight in reading, even a long railway journey alone ceases to be tedious, and long winter evenings to ourselves are an inexhaustible opportunity for pleasure.

Poetry is the greatest literature, and pleasure in poetry is the greatest of literary pleasures.  It is also the least easy to attain and there are some people who never do attain it.  I met some one the other day who did not care for poetry at all; it gave her no pleasure, no satisfaction, and only caused her to reflect how much better the thought, so it seemed to her, could be expressed in prose.  In the same way there are people who care nothing for music.  I knew one Englishman of whom it was said that he knew only two tunes:  one was the national anthem, “God Save the King,” and the other wasn’t.  We cannot help these people if they do not care for poetry or music, but I may offer you one or two suggestions founded on my own experience with regard to poetry.  There is much poetry for which most of us do not care, but with a little trouble when we are young we may find one or two poets whose poetry, if we get to know it well, will mean very much to us and become part of ourselves.  Poetry does not become intimate to us through the intellect alone; it comes to us through temperament, one might almost say enters us through the pores of the skin, and it is as if when we get older our skin becomes dry and our temperament hard and we can read only with the head.  It is when we are young, before we reach the age of thirty-five,