Children's Changing Hobbies.
What Young Minds Need.

The inquisitive mind of youth needs the constant stimulus of new ideas in the adventure of life. To the matured intellect it may seem perhaps to lack concentration; yet before it passes on to fresh fields of exploration some drop of knowledge has been extracted and absorbed.

Anxious parents may rest assured that the time and energy expended on any hobby, however short-lived, is never entirely wasted. For every youthful pastime, from gardening to the collection of postage stamps or the exhaustive study of railway engines, has a definitely educative value. In the way of actual constructive teaching this apparent instability and craving after novelty is sometimes a blessing in disguise and may often be exploited to the advantage of the child.

For example an astute art master once carried a whole class on the wings of his personal enthusiasm through a series of these temporary intoxications, instigated and directed by himself. Victims in turn to the lure of “black and white” to water-colour or design, to wood-cut or clay modelling, his pupils attained quite a high degree of proficiency in each before boredom overtook them.

Undoubtedly more can be learnt in a comparatively short space of time on the upward gradient of one of these sudden wild enthusiasms of youth than in months of the more placidly followed pursuits of later days. And the knowledge gained from these discarded hobbies goes to form a treasure house from which to draw at will in later life when, with advancing years, specialisation is bound to creep into leisure pursuits as into work.

Parents should, of course, see that the choice of a lasting hobby be not too long delayed, or the result will be a “jack-of-all-trades, master-or-none” attitude towards hobbies as to anything else.

But apart from this, a certain youthful dilettantism in hobby-riding is to be encouraged.

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In the early days, meat was roasted on a jack in front of a huge fire. The jack continually revolved, and a lad basted the meat till it was literally “done to a turn.” Oven roasting was the invention of a Count Rumford, at the beginning of the 19th century.