THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 305, 26 December 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT.

VARIOUS ATTRACTIONS.

BEST IN A HOSPITAL.

(By F.M.S.)

Holidays, to savour their full delight, must be rare; and they must be approached in ..the holiday spirit. I met a friend recently who was going to take hers' in the hospital. "Oh!" I exclaimed, full of sympathy, "Christmas in hospital! What' hard luck!" "Not a bit of it! I'm looking forward to it—the first- time I've, been away by myself for years and years. Think what a wonderful rest it?s going to be! Meals brought to me and.nothing to do but eat them! And the nurses are so kind and attentive —and there'll be flowers in the ward, and the band playing on' Sunday afternoons —and all the city fashions to b e . seen ,on visiting days—and my Christmas dinner cooked for me —I've grilled over Christmas dinners for twenty, years—and above all, women to talk to; I scarcely see another woman once in a niohth up there on the farm; I only hope I don't happen to be next a farmer's wife, that's all; I want to forget there are such things as wool and butterfat, and ensilages and mortgages; nice comfortable feminine gossip—that's what I want—lo+s of it. And I shall lie in bed air day and do nothing whatever, and be waited on hand and foot. You don't understand, of course, but to me it'll be heaven." Home from School. I did understand; I, too, had known holidays that were heaven, when long ago I journeyed . once a year from a London boarding, school to my home in the distant north; every detail of them remains in my memory; the weeks of anticipation and nights of sleepless excitement—the drive across London in the old four-wheeler, smelling of must and stables—Miss.Pegg walking up and down the platform with us, her step as staccato as her touch on the piano, her trim little figure so nicely rounded off by a bustle that never got askew—so different from the lopsided rakish bustles of some of the younger teachers —and a bustle out of plumb can be unbelievably rakish—the joyous abandon with which, when the Scotch express did at last get under way, we flung through the window the mutton sandwiches provided by a thoughtful matron, and fell instead on the store of Bath buns and nougat surreptitiously laid in at the refreshment room; and then the increasing tremors of happiness as the long day wore on, and the voices of the people at the stations took on the beloved North-country speech that told ot home, till "Newcassel! Newcassel! rang in our ears, and we were really there! Can the child of to-day, I wonder, with its many holidays, to say nothing of exeats,and other odds and ends, ever know such rapture? One of the chief essentials to the true holiday spirit is a sense of irresponsibility; no holiday of later years has given it in such abundance as the sailing holiday. Never did the cares of everyday life drop from us with such completeness as when we slipped our home moorings in the silver dawn and made for the open sea, with two whole weeks between us and life on shore. The freedom and independence gave us also a most pleasurable feeling of superiority; we felt we had achieved the perfect holiday, and could look down with pity on landlubbers, condemned to seaside lodgings, pedalling the dusty highway, or wrestling in the heat and glare of an August sun wit-i refractory motor cars; for the motors of those, days were things of uncertain temper, apt to leave one stranded in the midst of derisive villagers, whose attitude towards them was very much that of the London- bus driver who greeted the impatient city workers filling his bus after a breakdown on the Tube, with " That'll lam yer to travel in the drains!" Care for a Cat. Yet irresponsibility, isn't everything; I knew a spinster lady who took a terribly responsible holiday—and enjoyed it, too! She went with her pet cat to a seaside resort, and spent her time showing it the sights and protecting it from the attentions of the dojj population on the crowded parade. "It has done Fluffums so much good," she tolc 1 me, beaming. "It was really for her sake I came away; she needed a holiday much more than I did." And there was the woman who applied to the Poor Law guardians to be allowed to take a fortnight's holiday in the workhouse! Which all goes to show you that you can enjoy any sort of a holiday if .you go at it in the right spirit. • -