HOLIDAY HERESIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 27, 16 September 1911, Page 3

HOLIDAY HERESIES.

“A.s the skeleton carried round at Egyptian feasts whetted the zest of life rather than depressed the banquet, our professional contemporary, the “Lancet,” has no equal in its original method of spicing our pleasures,” says the ‘o‘hserver.” “Just when wc are! falling into the routine of holidaymaking and ceasing to invent fresh means of enjoying it, the medical oracle stimulates our minds lyy | upsetting our dearest delusions., Not many Christmases have passed since the “Lancet’s” ■ famous attack on mince-pies. Now its learned columns startle us at the psychological moment of an August Bank Holiday by a severe criticism of the seaside. • ’WARE THE iSALT BREEZES. “Who is there amongst' us' who has not. dreamed in thfe heat of flying to the edge of the wave, and breathing unlimited ozone with impunity? Samuel Weller was not bidden to ‘Boware of widders’ more earnestly than our contemporary admonishes ns to realise that for sonic of us—and mainly the middle-aged again—salt, breezes may be a delusion, and a snare. “Let the seaside, we are told, continue to ho the legitimate doiigne of the vigorous, hut let the languid pausp before they seek that, fancied leiioslj ment. It may suit them, or it may not. Not always isj it that ‘Lie individual seeking strfengLii can respond to its powerful and 1 exciting stimulus.’ In language as formidable as any layman has lately-read, the “Lancet” declares that at I ‘‘the seaside ‘the digestive, secretory, ‘circulatory’ and other system's ‘may be goaded' to an ,energy of which' they are incapable.’ The happy thing about tliii 5s that it will vastly‘hihrcase the giViety of millions all fo'ihid the coast io-morrow, and will furnish a hoaven-seh’t 1 topic of conversation Jpr .whole... holiday season. Nearly everyone who lias set out for the seaside hi Li proper mood of determined optimism ''will - assume that our medical contemporary’s advice can only apply to someone else, and will he the jpior.e cheerful accordi'-'- I y. “Stilliv/the ‘Lancet’n makes an interesting, ri and useful contribution to the sciewP.. and art of taking holidays when IB accompanies-a-ilimited amount of destructive criticism by a real constructive, -policy. There is infinite repose and beauty, in nature amid the deep country fur from, the waves. Inland woods and hills and heaths, gardens and river reaches iaro more soothing, more restorative, to some constitutions and conditions than is the whipping vigour of salt'water and its breezes. And theijes are .other advantages in cultivating a variety of tastes and experiences. Nothing is more enjoyable than to let country and seaside holidays follow each other in alternate years. THE GENERAL CONVENIENCE “T,he more widely we can be induced to spread ourselves the better will it from every point of view for the general convenience. The ‘Lancet’ will make everybody happier who has not gone to the sea and everybody merrier who is there. It is an admirable way of, completing the public felicity. There has rarely been a more trying interval of heat and drought and public, wear and tear between Whitsuntide and August, and we question whether any. scientific doilhts in the world 1 wdidd check the extraordinary sense, I ,)’ | rpedom and pleasure with whiehf the whole' nation outside Parliament •Is iyisihly 'rushing towards all the points' of the compass.” "■