This is no time to foster pleasure loving by providing the youth, as they enter upon their student's life, with facilities for the playing of games which are a snare to all who engage in them. . . .
They act as if the school were a place where they were to perfect themselves in sports, as if this were an important branch of their education, and they come armed and equipped for this kind of training. This is all wrong, from beginning to end. . . .
Amusement that serves as exercise and recreation is not to be discarded; nevertheless it must be kept strictly within bounds, else it leads to love of amusement for its own sake, and nourishes the desire for selfish gratification. . . .
A great mistake has been made in following
the world's plans and ideas of recreation in indulgence and pleasure-loving.
This has resulted in loss every time. We need now to begin over again.
It may be essential to lay the foundation of schools after the pattern
of the schools of the prophets.--Letter 47, 1893, pp. 5, 6, 7, 9. (T. W.
W. Prescott, October 25, 1893.)