It is so old a theme that I really hesitate to touch it; and yet it is
so true and so useful that I will. It is true all the time, and it is
particularly useful at this season of the year to men in cities: to all
repetitive men: to the men that read these words. What is more, true as
it is and useful as it is, no amount of hammering at people seems to
get this theme into their practice; though it has long ago entered into
their convictions they will not act upon it in their summers. And this
true and useful theme is the theme of little freedoms and discoveries,
the value of getting loose and away by a small trick when you want to
get your glimpse of Fairyland.
Now how does one get loose and away?
When a man says to himself that he must have a holiday he means that he
must see quite new things that are also old: he desires to open that
door which stood wide like a window in childhood and is now shut fast.
But where are the new things that are also the old? Paradoxical fellows
who deserve drowning tell one that they are at our very doors. Well,
that is true of the eager mind, but the mind is no longer eager when it
is in need of a holiday. And you can get at the new things that are
also the old by way of drugs, but drugs are a poor sort of holiday
fabric. If you have stored up your memory well with much experience you
can get these things from your memory—but only in a pale sort of way.
I think the best avenue to recreation by the magical impressions of the
world upon the mind is this: To go to some place to which the common
road leads you and then to get just off the common road. You will be
astonished to find how strange the world becomes in the first mile—and
how strange it remains till the common road is reached again.
It always sounds like a mockery for a man who has travelled to a great
many places, as I have, to advise his fellows to travel abroad; they
are most of them hard tied. Yet it is really a much easier thing than
men bound to the desk and the workshop understand. Britain is but one
great port, and its inward seas are narrow—and the fares are
ridiculously low. If you are a young man you can go almost anywhere for
almost anything, sitting up by night on deck, and not expecting too
much courtesy. But, of course, if you shirk the sea you are a prisoner.
Well, then, supposing you abroad, or even in some other part of this
highly varied kingdom in which you live, and supposing you to have
reached some chosen place by some common road—what I desire to dilate
upon here is the truth which every little excursion of business or of
leisure (and precious few of leisure) makes me more certain of every
day: That just a little way off the road is fairyland.
It was exactly three days ago that I had occasion to go down the
railway line that is the most frequented in Europe: I was on business,
not leisure, but in the business I had two days’ leisure, and I did
what I would advise all other men to do in such a circumstance.