Public holiday

“ Many of the little street children who spend a large part of their time in efforts to support the family, when allowed to go to a fair or have a public holiday enjoy themselves more in a single day than the child of wealth, in a whole month of idleness.
In addition to his games and rhymes, the fairs which are held regularly in the great Buddhist temples in different parts of the cities, are to the Chinese boy what a country fair, a circus or Fourth of July is to an American farmer's boy or girl. ”

“ Some folk travel as if they were always familiar with turtle and champagne at home, and therefore should not complain if they are made to pay for the distinction. But if you are content to go simply on your own merits, wishing nothing better than to enjoy a holiday, it is perfectly possible, [Pg 268] while on foot, to travel for four-and-sixpence a day, sometimes even less. And think not that because you choose the public-house instead of the hotel you will suffer in regard to diet, or find any lack of comfort and cleanliness. ”

“ Probably few persons who have a choice of holidays select a Bank holiday, which falls in the spring or summer, as one on which they will travel, or stroll in the country, unless, indeed, they live in neighbourhoods very far removed from large towns. Every railway station is crowded; every booking-office thronged; every seat—nay, all standing room—is occupied in every kind of public conveyance ”

“ Most of the men, however, particularly the unmarried ones, prefer making a thorough holiday of it, and for the rest of the afternoon the streets of the town are filled with groups of merry-makers; the public houses ply a brisk trade, and the evening is often far advanced before the joyous groups think of returning to their own homes. ”

“ Warm but fresh—how could it help being fresh in that pure mountain air, which turned Sunny’s cheeks the colour of opening rosebuds, and made even papa and mamma feel almost as young as she? Big people like holidays as well as little people, and it was long since they had had a holiday. ”

“ Day dies out. Far away, behind the gardens of the Résidence, lingers a glimmer of the departing sun, red in the fog; and in the town is such gaiety, such hurry of preparation for the holiday, that each jet of light which springs up in the many windows seems to hang from some vast Christmas-tree. ”

“ For the pleasures of a roving life and the excitement of not knowing when you wake what the day may bring forth.”
“It is preferable, at least, to the humdrum holiday of the ordinary tourist.”
“Holiday!” He looked incredulous. “Scarcely a holiday in the sense in which most men understand the term. You are tied, I presume, by no limit of time or means; is it not rather the business of your life now to rove where you will, answerable to no one, cut off from all ties, your very family in total ignorance of your whereabouts?” ”

“ I have often wondered what country children do for a holiday. Do good people go round collecting to give them a day in London or Liverpool or Manchester, so that their stunted lives that stretch on from year to year with never a whiff of town fog, never a glimpse of green 'buses, or dangerous crossings, or furnace-smoke, may be expanded and elevated? ”

“ You feel that every one who passes by knows and approves of your idea of a holiday, and will quite understand when you ride out on the Champs Élysées at eleven o'clock in the morning with four other men packed in one fiacre, or when, for no apparent reason, you hurl your hat into the air. ”

“ For a small sum he can get far away from the close and smoky town, to the seaside perhaps, but certainly to the fields and country air; he can make of every fine Sunday in the summer a holiday indeed. ”

“ The great abuse of holidays is when they are too few. There are offices, we understand, in the city, in which, with the exception of Sundays, people have but one holiday or so throughout the year, which appears to us a very melancholy hilarity. ”

“ We never go away, either to the country or the sea-side, or have picnics, or parties, or any excitements of that kind. We just stay quietly at home and go on with the usual work, but I am with Mother, you know—that’s my holiday! ”

“ Every departure, every admission of a scholar, was celebrated with brilliant display; every birthday furnished the opportunity of a feast, and every holiday became the welcomed occasion for a pleasure excursion which the young men on horseback, and followed by their servants in livery, made in the vicinity of Paris. ”

“ Here, once again, by the chill blue river,
The blighted buds on the branches shiver;
Here, again, are the holiday groups, with delight
Gaping in wonder at some new sight
'Tis an open doorway, squalid and low,
And crowds which ceaselessly come and go.
Careless enough ere they see the sight
Which leaves the gay faces pallid and white:
Something is there which can change their mood,
And check the holiday flow of the blood.
For the face which they see is the face of Death. ”

“ The city's great holiday is the Mardi Gras carnival, which is celebrated just before Lent. The keys of the city are then given over to the King of the Carnival, and all day long high revelry holds sway. Brilliant floats, representing scenes of wonderful quaintness and loveliness, parade through flower-garlanded avenues thronged with people who have come from every quarter of the globe. ”

“ The very presence of a lengthened festivity—for festivity can never be solitary—would, apart from its sacred causes, promote these wholesome effects. The extended space of time over which this festival is spread, the protracted holiday which it creates, points it out for the gathering together of distant friends whom the passing nature of an occasional and single celebration would fail to collect from their scattered places of the world. ”

“ Here we had those blessed country hours of day-done, when it was right and lawful to be openly idle in this world, and to look over through the beautiful evening glooms to neighbor worlds, that showed always a round of busy light, and yet seemed somehow to keep holiday-time with us, and to be only out at play in the spacious ether. ”

“ A half-holiday every week would be a mighty boon to the working man who has acquired a taste for the quiet pleasures of intellect, and either cultivates an affection for natural objects, or, according to the antiquary, "loves to look upon what is old." My recollections of this rich tract of country, with its woods, and towers, and noble river, seem as if bathed in the red light of gorgeous sunsets. ”

“ Neither rain nor hail, nothing makes any difference, nothing will prevent them from going out, from closing behind them the door of the deserted workshop, of the stuffy little lodging. But when the springtime is come, when the May sunshine glitters on it as this morning, and it can deck itself out in gay colours, then indeed Sunday is the holiday of holidays. ”

“ And if Sunday fishing is allowed, do not give umbrage to many of the parishioners going to church by making a parade of your waders and fishing rod. Either get to your water before church time or else wait till the church bells are over before you walk along the village street. Busy City men get scant leisure for sport, and may fairly be excused for utilising their week-end holiday to the full. Much latitude may be allowed to them in this respect, provided they are careful not to outrage the religious feelings of others. ”

“ For men who know how to bear themselves company there are few better ways of improving a holiday, especially a home-keeping, home-coming, family feast, like our autumnal Thanksgiving, than to walk in one’s own childish steps—up through the old cattle pasture behind the old homestead, into the old woods. ”

“ But in Congreve and in Wycherley all the conventional values are inverted: it is the holiday of the worldly and it has all the exhilaration of a holiday. What could be more gratifying and more cheerful than these husbands and wives who are never faithful, these young men whose intentions are never honourable, these coquettes who never want to marry? ”

“ Angus uttered the authoritative fiat, every eye glistened and all sorts of glorious “ploys” loomed in anticipation.
We got our holidays in autumn that we might be free to lend a helping hand at home or in the harvest-field during the busy season. How different are things nowadays! The twentieth-century boy must on no account be subjected to any work during his holiday time; he needs not only to have all his vacation for rest and amusement—he even looks to have amusement provided for him. ”

“ Of all nights of the year there is not one that is more anxiously awaited by young people than the night that precedes Christmas. Then begins the great festival of the year; the festival in honour of the birth of Christ; the festival that reminds us of the Child born in a manger, of the shepherds near Bethlehem watching their flocks by night, and of the angels that sang of peace and goodwill to men. It is the most joyous of all holiday seasons ”

“ Pleas of necessity have been put forward where contractors desired to push jobs and profits. Sunday excursions are universal, and in order to gain their Sunday pleasure-outings several millions of people of all races keep several other millions hard at work on the day of rest. All places are crowded on Sunday except the churches. Go among the foreign elements in the city and you would never know it was Sunday. Holiday has supplanted holy-day. Observe the trolley-cars or subway or elevated trains on Sunday and you will see nine foreigners out of every ten persons. ”

“ It is the day when all the people, from the highest to the lowest, have a holiday. For days, and even weeks, preparations are made to celebrate the festival with proper ceremony. Never are the streets of the cities and towns so filled with gayly dressed crowds of people hurrying here and there, buying and selling, as during the last days of the dying year. ”

“ For these reasons—and some others, which are more personal and less philosophical—we love all old traditions and holiday customs. Like honest Sir Andrew Aguecheek, we "delight in masques and revels, sometimes altogether." Many a happy chance has conducted us unpremeditatedly into the midst of some rustic festival, whose recollection is amongst our pleasant memories yet,—and many a one have we gone venturously forth to seek,—when we dwelt in the more immediate neighborhood of the haunts to which, one by one, these traditionary observances are retiring before the face of civilization! ”

“ The peculiarity of our attitude towards Christmas, which at worst is a vacation, may be clearly seen by contrasting it with our attitude towards another vacation—the summer holiday. We do not have to brace and force ourselves up to the enjoyment of the summer holiday. ”

“ And as the holidays of busy men are short, and therefore to be made as much of as possible, I conceive that I shall be rendering some service, and providing myself with a fair excuse for my presumption, if I venture to shew, by a simple narrative of a tour undertaken in the course of the year before last, how much it is possible to accomplish with pleasure, and, when one has some definite object in view, with profit of no common kind, even in a short holiday. ”

“ But let the young men have Saturday afternoon for their boating and bowling and various pastimes, and they will be far more disposed to hear what the minister has to say on Sunday,—far more disposed, let us hope, to join in prayer and praise. One very obvious and practical consideration is, that many of them, probably the larger part, can spend on a single holiday all the holiday money they have to spend. ”

“ You know how it goes on a holiday—the holiday, that is, of a man to whom holidays are rare and very blessed. For the first day your mind has not yet freed itself from town and toil and the hundred other interests for which they stand. ”

“ The cheap excursions, the school feasts, the concerts given for the people, the increased brightness of religious services, the Bank holidays, the Saturday half-holiday, all point to the gradual recognition of the great natural law that men and women, as well as boys and girls, must have play. ”

“ WHAT MAKES A HOLIDAY?
What is it makes a holiday? Some people want Paris, some Monte Carlo, one man cannot be satisfied without big game to hunt, another must have a grouse moor. The student has his sailing boat, the young wage-earner his bicycle, three girl friends look forward to their week in a Hastings boarding-house. Almost anything may be “a change”; most things, to someone or other, are “a holiday.” ”

“ Nowadays, when the working day is so short and the working year so interspersed with ample vacations, the old-fashioned holiday has ceased to serve any purpose, and would be regarded as a nuisance. We prefer to choose and use our leisure time as we please. ”

“ CHAPTER V. A MEMORABLE HOLIDAY. Provided a school-boy is blessed with a happy home and kind friends," commenced Hall, "there is no one in the world who looks forward to a holiday with so much pleasure, or enjoys it so thoroughly. When the time draws near that he is to leave school-life for a season, how old Father Time seems to lag on his journey, as if he had grown tired, or lame, or had met with an accident and was delayed on the way, so slowly does the wished-for day come. ”

“ For the children there is the day in the country. Every summer day long caravans of wagons filled with children, singing and shouting as they go, drive along the roads to the nearest country place, or excursion trains crammed with children are carried off to the nearest seaside places. They run about on the seashore, they bathe, they sit down to a tea of cake and buns, and they are taken home at night tired out but singing and shouting to the end. This summer “day out” is the one great holiday for the children ”