The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-07-13
SUMMER TRAVEL AND VACATION.

sand, between the sun and moon up
on the shore. while back of us lies
"A land of streams! Some, like downward
smoke.
Slow-dropping wells of thinnest lawn did go;
And some thro' waverlng lights and shadows
broke.
Rolling a slumb' rous sheet of foam below"
But the sea-shore and the noun
taius, while they have their charms,
have also their bills, which are liable
to cut short even a lotus-eater's
dreams, and most of us will have to
spend our summers in more prosaic
and, let us trust, in more profitable
way than they do in ''the land where
it is always afternoon"
And after all, perhaps it would be
just as we'll physically, and far more
wholesome mentally for us if, instead
of lotus eating and dreaming, we
were all of us, for change, to imi-
tate the King of Greece who, it is
said, turns farmer during part of the
summer and works as hard as though
he were a land laborer. For king
to be able to plough field, cut and
bind wheat, and do all the labors of a
farm from start to finish is certainly
an unusual accomplishment in these
modern days, though according we'll
enough with Carlyle's favorite idea of
the derivation of the word king from
the Anglo-Saxon word for "the able
man." the man who "can." The con-
tact with the soil is life-giving, and
verifes the old fable of the one in
Greek mythology whose strength was
invincible so long as he touched the
earth. The summer is the season
when Nature, so to speak, is Eat
home" to the visitor from the cities
and every wood, field, land and
hedgerow is en- fete to welcome all
corners. But so long have the
children of the towns been away
from Mother Nature that many of
them fail to pay even the tribute of a
brief visit to her in the midst of her
green fields and waving harvests,
where all the land lies in fruitfulness
and repose, and instead, seek the
fashionable watering places, the vari-
GUS resorts on the mountains or ON
the shores of some inland lake,
where there is as little of nature and
as much of society as possible.
Others land these we admit are to be
envied) "do" Europe during the sum-
mer and come back to desk or count
ing-room in the autumn re-invigor-
ated with the health and inspiration of
change and travel and with life's hori-
zon infinitely broadened by Gimp
SEES down the vast vistas of history
given by the sight of classic ruins or
noble monuments. Nothing broadens
the mind like travel, provided always
the traveller is prepared to profit by
his journeyings.
But even in the matter of travel
human frailty and vanity are not
eliminated. Europe has so often been
'sdone" by travellers who, as Jules
Verne tells us, let their servants see
the country for them, or by those
who lack the literary and historical
appreciation which lends to travel its
greatest charm, that it is almost in
order for some one to come to the aid
of Tuckerman in his defence of
Enthusiasm" So little do most
travellers profit by their opportunities,
however willing and even anxious
they may be to do 80.
OF another class, those who stake a
run across; who talk Familiarity of
Chamouni without particle of the
glow Coleridge felt as he saw it in the
splendor of sunrise; who ever scorn
the useful Murray or Baedeker, are
on their return enthusiastic chiefly
about hotels, the opera in Paris, the
clubs in London, and Strauss in
Vienna, there seems to be no good
reason why they should henceforth
travel at all,-at least no further
than their beloved Paris. By "a happy
thought of an ingenious and artful
Frenchman, who has studied this
class of travellers to his profit, it is
now possible for such tourists to stay
in "dear Paris" and yet "do" Europe
satisfactorily. This method is sim
plicity itself, as are nearly all the
happy inspirations of genius. 1t con-
sists simply in reading up carefully
in Baedeker or Murray, getting up"
scraps of anecdotes about hotels and
ruins, and lastly and most important
of all, buying of said ingenious
Frenchman a stock of pastors and
labels, exact reproductions of those
in use at railway stations in all the
countries of Europe.
| The Tourist has hut tn select the