I have never had, nor felt the need of having, a hobby. When I was a kid, friends of mine collected stamps or miniature cars or made model airplanes. I did none of these things. When I was 11 or 12, a shop moved into our neighborhood called Hobby Models, catering to hobbyists of all sorts. I found nothing of the least interest there. I didn’t disdain or put down friends with hobbies. In fact, I rather envied them. I myself seemed to have neither the temperament nor the skill to be a hobbyist.

Something there is about a hobby that suggests handsome margins of leisure in one’s life—that and interests beyond the humdrum of merely making a living. That a man or woman grows roses or keeps orchids, does woodworking, searches out coins from antiquity, seeks out first editions, or collects 19th-century cookbooks gives that man or woman’s life added dimension.