save in connection with skittles, so to speak. Now it seems hardly
necessary to erect a splendid palace for the better convenience of the
skittle alley. The objections, in fact, to supporting the scheme on
the ground of its recreative aims show a mixture of prejudice and
ignorance which ought to astonish us were we not daily, in every
business transaction and in every talk with friend or stranger,
encountering, and very likely revealing, the most wonderful prejudice
and ignorance. One should never be surprised at finding great black
patches in every mind.

The black patch which concerns us, in the minds of those who have been
asked to support the People's Palace, is the subject of recreation.
'There are enough music-halls. What have the working classes to do
with recreation? If we give anything for the people it will be for
their improvement, not for their amusement.' To these three objections
all the rest may be reduced. Each objection points to a prejudice of
very ancient standing, or else to a deep-seated ignorance of the whole
subject.

To deal with the first. It is assumed that recreation means amusement,
idle and purposeless, if not skittles with beer and tobacco, then the
music-hall with beer and tobacco, the comic man bawling a topical song
and executing the famous clog-dance. If one points out that it is not
amusement that is meant, but recreation, which is explained to mean a
very different thing, while a truer conception of what recreation
really means may be seized, then there remains a rooted disbelief as
to the power of the working man to rise above his beer and skittles.
It is a disbelief not at all based upon familiarity with the manners
and customs of the working man, because the ordinary well-to-do
citizen, however much he may have read of manners and customs in other