MAKING THE MOST OF A HOLIDAY

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1507, 17 January 1901, Page 13

MAKING THE MOST OF A HOLIDAY

To a recent number of lhe “ Young V\ cmati" Madame Sarah Grand contributes au article on “'How to Make the Most of a Holiday." She points out that some holidays only-acid one fatigue to another. ‘‘lt is said that a change of work is as good as a rest. It may be. But it is always well to bring 4suc.fi assertions down from the general to the particular. On this pi-ineq.de of a change of work the girl whose brain, is already exhausted goes off on her’ bicycle in the hope of relieving her nerves by trying her muscles. It does not occur to her that the expenditure of nerve power is still going on while she is taking exercise. What she requires is rest. Children suffering from headache, and urgently in need of repose, are often cruelly sent out to play, when every step is a pang to them. ‘What, headache again f ’ says the thoughtless parent or teacher. ‘Well, go out. That will do you good. It’s only stomach/ —as it any.

thing «.oui«l be worse than stomach, or more significant of loss of nerve -power. An'.! Lite poor little sufferer drags Perse if out. und hangs about m misery, ma-.v-itig a tong chronic business of what should have been a temporary trouble. 3.' he com-mon-sense treatment of these early symptoms is to make the child lie clown in a nice cool, quiet room, well, covered up, with the windows wide open and the blinds drawn. A few hours of that sort of holiday would suinc-e to restore her. Modern medical science takes rest very much into account as well as exercise/' Madame Sarah Grand points out the clifficuU'v which many overworked mothers have in getting a holiday. "Her daughters, ’ she says, "as thee grow up, should obviously come to the rescue with the necessary help in household matters; but this is the last thing the modern girl, as a rule, thinks of doing. In the classes where the girls are not made to work, the great business of their lives is their own amusement. It is not an uncommon thing in a middle-class household to see the mother making and mending the daughter's clothes, while that young lady horse! t‘ is deep in a penny novelette. One cannot say that the mothers are to blame either. The fault is in the wretched system. which has. deprived women of any true sense of responsibility, and made gentlehood a matter of idleness and luxury rather than of character and conduct. A real Uulv. in the estimation of more classes than the one which gives us the expression. is a person who 'never soils her hands,’ and mothers sacrifice themselves in order that their daughters may live up to that paltry ideal.