Year: 1873

him anticipate what the future is sure to
bring"


sQUANDERING THE SUMMER.


Some millions of our fellow-citizens
are now engaged in spending the sum-
mer," at the seashore or among the
mountains, at the springs or in the coun-
try. They are spending it lavishly
enough, and multitude are getting
nothing or next to nothing for it. In
plain truth they are squandering it.
Those weeks in which the distracted den-
izens of city and town withdraw from
the business and the hustle of the mart
and the office, and the fatiguing ankle
ties of the household, seeking rest for
their bodies and respite from. their cares,
ought to be the most productive weeks in
the year. They ought to enlarge our
knowledge. increase our faith, augment
our stores of patience and charity. We
ought to return from them reinforced for
our work and bearing in our thoughts
larger and truer ideal of life. Some of
us do, let US trust, get all this out of
our vacation but many find in it moth
ing but WEAKNESS and trouble tits not
so much matter where the citizen goes for
his summer pilgrimage. Long Branch
has its many partisans, and Saratoga its
many devotees, Newport its worshipers,
Oaon ICs Lnou-
sands of votaries, the Berkshire Hills
and the Saranac Lakes their throng of
faithful pilgrims and scores of other re-
sorts, more or less famous. All these
have good reasons for their preferences,
which We do not care to discuss. Some
of the resorts are better than others, no
doubt; but the greater majority of our
tourists will squander the summer let
them 60 where they will, while there is
a precious few who can pluck from the
nettle excitement the flower repose. The
trouble with the tourists at the watering
places is that they do not 60 for rest
1t is with most of them a carnival of
dress and dissipation; laborious. anx-
ious, miserable scramble for the cheap
rewards of vanity. The rivalries of
fashion are sharp and merciless; they
entail upon those who enter into them
an infinite amount of labor and an un-
ceasing care for the things that are least,
and the career upon which the fashion
able people embark with the packing of
the Saratoga trunk is arduous and bur-
densome in the superlative degree
Many fair lady devotes to her summer
toilet so much time and toll and anx-
ious thought that she returns to her
home in September more tired than when
she left it in July.


This is what we mean by squandering
the summer. We do not complain that
the vacation is spent in comparative
idleness. Judicious idleness may be a
means of grace. The extravaganza Of
expenditure which the tourists some.
times practice and always affect is a
7 great evil but the squandering of mon.
ey is less wicked than the squandering
of time that ought to be sacred to rest
and recreation in the senseless rivalries
of the fashion display. Especially dc
we protest against the cruelties otter
practiced at the summer resorts upor
the little children. If grown folks viii
squander their own summer. they have
no right to rob the children of theirs
To these little people the exactions Of
style are altogether distasteful. They
want their freedom, room to range anc
romp and gambol all day long; it il
their pleasure and their profit, too, tc
roll on the grass. to dig in the dirt, tt
browse in the woods. to wade in the
brooks, to establish in every way tho
closest relations with Mother Nature
Calico and linen, stout shoes, wide -brim
med straw hats are the kind of appare
they need from all disturbing anxieties
OF costume they ought to be delivered
What horrible cruelty then. is that prac
ticed upon them by foolish parents wht
seek to make little prigs of them, wht
confne them in strait jackets of starch
ed muslin, and bind them with manacles
of silk and lace. and then set dragons O
nurses to watch them all day long les
they tarnish their fnery by contact witt
the soil or sod Thus the summer vaca
tion, which ought to be to every healthy
child full of delight frcm beginning t.
end, is made to many of them minis
try of vanity. rather than of innocent
joy, weariness of the flesh. instead o.
a delight to the senses.