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marbles. So that, in a large view, the distinction between workers and idlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the very heart and innermost nature of men of all ranks and in all 10 positions. There is a working class-strong and happy among both rich and poor; there is an idle class - weak, wicked, and miserable-among both rich and poor. And the worst of the misunderstandings arising between the two orders come 15 of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class (how little wise in this!) habitually contemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be right among them; and it the busy poor people watched 20 and rebuked the idle poor people, all would be right among them. But each looks for the faults of the other. A hard working man of property is particularly offended by an idle beggar; and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant of the 25 licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in the unjust — but among the unjust only. None but the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural 30 enemies, or desire to pillage their houses and divide their property. None but the dissolute among the rich speak in opprobrious terms of the vices and follies of the poor.

There is, then, no worldly distinction between

idle and industrious people; and I am going tonight 35 to speak only of the industrious. The idle people we will put out of our thoughts at once they are mere nuisances what ought to be done with them, we'll talk of at another time. But there are class distinctions among the industrious themselves, 40 tremendous distinctions, which rise and fall to every degree in the infinite thermometer of human pain and of human power, - distinctions of high and low, of lost and won, to the whole reach of man's soul and body.

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These separations we will study, and the laws of them, among energetic men only, who, whether they work or whether they play, put their strength into the work, and their strength into the game; being in the full sense of the word "industrious" 50 one way or another, - with purpose, or without. And these distinctions are mainly four:

I. Between those who work, and those who play. II. Between those who produce the means of life, and those who consume them.

III. Between those who work with the head, and those who work with the hand.

IV. Between those who work wisely, and those who work foolishly.

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For easier memory, let us say we are going to 60 oppose, in our examination,

I. Work to play;

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II. Production to consumption;

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First, then, of the distinction between the classes who work and the classes who play. Of course we must agree upon a definition of these terms - work and play - before going farther. Now, roughly, 70 not with vain subtlety of definition, but for plain use of the words, "play" is an exertion of body or mind, made to please ourselves, and with no determined end; and work is a thing done because it ought to be done, and with a determined end. You 75 play, as you call it, at cricket, for instance. That is as hard work as anything else; but it amuses you, and it has no result but the amusement. If it were done as an ordered form of exercise, for health's sake, it would become work directly. So, in like 80 manner, whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is "play," the "pleasing thing," not the useful thing. Play may be useful in a secondary sense (nothing is indeed more useful or necessary); but 85 the use of it depends on its being spontaneous.1

Let us, then, inquire together what sort of games the playing class in England spend their lives in playing at. The first of all English games is making money. That is an all absorbing game; 90 and we knock each other down oftener in playing at that than at football, or any other roughest sport;

1 Spontaneous, resulting from a natural impulse.

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and it is absolutely without purpose; no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great money maker what he wants to do with his money he never knows. He doesn't make it 95 to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. "What will you make of what you have got?" you ask. "Well, I'll get more," he says. Just as, at cricket, you get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more of them than other 100 people is the game. And there's no use in the money, but to have more of it than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there, rattling, growling, smoking, stinking,

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a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out 105 poison at every pore, you fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play, and very hard play, but still play. It is only Lord's1 cricket ground without the turf,a huge billiard table without the cloth, and with 110 pockets as deep as the bottomless pit; but mainly a billiard table, after all.

Well, the first great English game is this playing at counters.2 It differs from the rest in that it appears always to be producing money, while every 115 other game is expensive. But it does not always produce money. There's a great difference between "winning" money and "making" it; a great dif1Lord's, a famous English cricket ground. 2 Counters, betting, gambling.

ference between getting it out of another man's 120 pocket into ours, or filling both.

Our next great English games, however, hunting and shooting, are costly altogether; and how much we are fined for them annually in land, horses, gamekeepers, and game laws, and the resultant 125 demoralization of ourselves, our children, and our retainers, and all else that accompanies that beautiful and special English game, I will not endeavor to count now: but note only that, except for exercise, this is not merely a useless game, but a deadly 130 one, to all connected with it. For through horse racing, you get every form of what the higher classes everywhere call "Play," in distinction from all other plays; that is, gambling; and through game preserving, you get also some curious laying out of 135 ground; that beautiful arrangement of dwelling house for man and beast, by which we have grouse and blackcock-so many brace to the acre, and men and women so many brace to the garret. I often wonder what the angelic builders and sur140 veyors the angelic builders who build the "many mansions" up above there; and the angelic surveyors, who measured that four square city with their measuring reeds, I wonder what they think, or are supposed to think, of the laying out of ground 145 of this nation.

Then, next to the gentlemen's game of hunting we must put the ladies' game of dressing. It is not

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