(_JEREMIAD BY A MIDDLE-AGED MARTYR TO THE GREAT SEASIDE
SUPERSTITION._)
["To middle-aged people, at all events, nothing can be more
trying and deleterious than holidays."--_Daily News_.]
Oh, thanks to thee, thanks to thee, sage unconventional!
Heaven be blest, the truth's out, then, at last!
Holiday woes--'twould take volumes to mention all!--
Now, in the lump, meet a shrewd counterblast.
_Trying?_ Of course they are! _Most deleterious?_
Scribe, let me clasp thee, in thought, to this breast!
Holiday-hunting is Man's most mysterious,
Maddening guest!
_Quixote_, I swear, was a model of sanity,
When with the Holiday-seeker compared.
Fidgety folly, and fussy inanity.
These be the figments by which we are snared.
Soon as you're drawn from your own cosy drawing-room,
Far over flood, field, or foam--for your sins--
Then, when your breast makes for vulturine gnawing room,
Bother begins!
Bother, that bugbear of bufferish Middle-Age!
Swift "scurry-funging" may do for the young,
The "hey-diddle-diddle, the Cat-and-the-fiddle" age.
"Over the moon" I myself once had sprung,
Thirty years syne, in sheer fervour athletical--
Now, like the dog, I would laugh, and look on.
Once, with sheer "drive," I'd a sense sympathetical--
Now I have none!
Holiday? Term, Sir, is simply a synonym
For--waste of tissue! What doctor will dare
Tell his poor patients so? _I_'ll put _my_ tin on him!
Rest? Recreation? Pick-up? Change of air?
All question-begging fudge-phrases of sophistry!
Let city-toilers who're fagged or "run down,"
Autumnal _quiet_ (in home or in office), try;
_Not_ "out of town."
Out of town? Where is the term that's claptrappier?
_Means_ out of temper, or out of your mind.
Boot-black or old crossing-sweeper's far happier,
Tied to his task in the town--as you'll find.
Picking up coppers far better than picking up
Shells by the sea, or sham friends on the snore.
Bah! What have buffers to do with such kicking-up
Heels? It's a bore!
Who'll start a League to be called Anti-Holiday?
Bet half the middle-aged men-folk will join!
Then we _might_ get an occasional jolly day,
Free from the pests who perplex and purloin.
"Health-Resort" quackery, portmanteau-packery,
Cheat-brigade charges and chills I might miss.
Dear-bought jimcrackery, female knicknackery!--
Oh! 'twere pure bliss!
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