The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1888-06-20
Useless Vacations.

The fact has frequently been COM
mented on that Americans lack the
faculty of enjoying their holidays and
vacations in such manner as to make
them in any sense rest. The habit
of work, of persistent stir and activity,
becomes so strong that it can hardly be
shaken off and an attempt to secure
rest is often accompanied by sense of
effort utterly inconsistent with the idea
of rest. Every one who has observed
the jaded appearance of a picnic party
returning from day spent in jaunt
after enjoyment is familiar with this
idea, but it finds still more forcible
illustration in an account lately pub
lished in the art Age of the failure of
an attempt at rest made by party of
working girls last October. They were
employed the year round in a brush
factory in the city, and philanthropic
lady of wealth thought to do them
marked kindness by sending them into
the country for two weeks rest at
pleasant farmhouse. They had been
accustomed to working regularly ten
hours day, rising early, carrying their
dinners and reaching home late. Their
only time for amusement was during a
short evening, and Sunday was their
only resting-day. At their work they
sat all day on long-legged stools without
backs. On the farm they need not
rise until eight in the morning, unless
they chose; easy rocking-chairs, ham
mocks and swings were at their serv-
ice, and they had three full, warm
meals day. In addition to all this an
abundance of light reading matter was
provided and a large orchard was free
to them. Yet, with all these advantages,
the experiment proved dismal failure.
The girls did not care to read; they
were too uneasy to enjoy the chairs and
hammocks and found their greatest
satisfaction in long walks over a dusty
road to the nearest town. They found
country life dull, cherries and uninter-
esting, and finally gave up the attempt
to enjoy themselves and returned to
the city three days before their vacation
was ended. These girls were city born
and bred and had sense of strange
ness and discomfort outside their
native element that they could not over
come. Habit had made the warm room
where they earned their weekly wages
more attractive than all the charms of
the country, which they had no faculty
to appreciate or enjoy. The stir and
hustle of the shop, the hum of voices,
the laughter of mate, and, more than
all, the incentive of the wages for which
they toiled, made their everyday life
not only tolerable, but positively a
pleasure, compared with the aimless,
listless life they lived at the farmhouse,
and they were doubtless delighted to
find themselves back on their hard =,
high stools again. The same sensation
of relief has been expressed by many a
man and woman upon returning to sur
roundings and duties that habit has
made long familiar, and an illustration
quite as pointed as that of the shop
girls is often found in the case of hard
working country people whose sons or
daughters have made homes for them
selves in the city and been successful
in life. The sturdy father finds him
self surrounded with unfamiliar house
hold objects and goes out to wander
through unaccustomed streets. Even
his sons office or store seems uncon-
genial to him, and time hangs heavily
on his hands, only to be made tolerable
if he finds something to busy himself
about. If his son has wood-pile to
be sawed and wheeled into the shed, or
garden to be spaded, the city visit will
not be altogether failure; otherwise,
the probabilities are that the worthy
old gentleman will 60 back to his farm
and plain, substantial home proud of
the boy, likely enough, but with sense
of relief that the visit is over, after
all.-MancheSter (N. H. Union.