Browning liked modelling in clay, Wordsworth liked long
walks, Byron had enough to do to keep himself thin, Tennyson had
his pipe, Morris made tapestry at a loom. Southey had no
amusements, and he died of softening of the brain. The happy people
are those who have work which they love, and a hobby of a totally
different kind which they love even better. But I doubt whether one
can make a hobby for oneself in middle age, unless one is a very
resolute person indeed.
February 7, 1889.
The children went off yesterday to spend the inside of the day with
a parson hard by, who has three children of his own, about the same
age. They did not want to go, of course, and it was particularly
terrible to them, because neither I nor their mother were to go
with them. But I was anxious they should go: there is nothing
better for children than occasionally to visit a strange house, and
to go by themselves without an elder person to depend upon. It
gives them independence and gets rid of shyness. They end by
enjoying themselves immensely, and perhaps making some romantic
friendship. As a child, I was almost tearfully insistent that I
should not have to go on such visits; but yet a few days of the
sort stand out in my childhood with a vividness and a distinctness,
which show what an effect they produced, and how they quickened
one's perceptive and inventive faculties.
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