Life In Vacation.
How well I remember my last vacation! I knew it was my last, and I did not
lose one instant of it. Six weeks of unalloyed!
True, after school days are over, people have what are called vacations.
Your father takes his at the store, and Uncle William has the "long
vacation," when the Court does not sit. But a man's vacation, or a
woman's, is as nothing when it is compared with a child's or a young man's
or a young woman's home from school. For papa and Uncle William are
carrying about a set of cares with them all the time. They cannot help it,
and they carry them bravely, but they carry them all the same. So you see
a vacation for men and women is generally a vacation with its weight of
responsibility. But your vacations, while you are at school, though they
have their responsibilities, indeed, have none under which you ought not
to walk off as cheerfully as Gretchen, there, walks down the road with
that pail of milk upon her head. I hope you will learn to do that some
day, my dear Fanchon.
Hear, then, the essential laws of vacation:--
First of all,
Do Not Get Into Other People's Way.
Horace and Enoch would not have made such a mess of it last summer, and
got so utterly into disgrace, if they could only have kept this rule in
mind. But, from mere thoughtlessness, they were making people wish they
were at the North Pole all the time, and it ended in their wishing that
they were there themselves.
Thus, the very first morning after they had come home from Leicester
Academy,--and, indeed, they had been welcomed with all the honors only the
night before,--when Margaret, the servant, came down into the kitchen, she
found her fire lighted, indeed, but there were no thanks to Master Enoch
for that. The boys were going out gunning that morning, and they had taken
it into their heads that the two old fowling-pieces needed to be
thoroughly washed out, and with hot water. So they had got up, really at
half past four; had made the kitchen fire themselves; had put on ten times
as much water as they wanted, so it took an age to boil; had got tired
waiting, and raked out some coals and put on some more water in a skillet;
had upset this over the hearth, and tried to wipe it up with the cloth
that lay over Margaret's bread-cakes as they were rising; had meanwhile
taken the guns to pieces, and laid the pieces on the kitchen table; had
piled up their oily cloths on the settle and on the chairs; had spilled
oil from the lamp-filler, in trying to drop some into one of the ramrod
sockets, and thus, by the time Margaret did come down, her kitchen and her
breakfast both were in a very bad way.
Horace said, when he was arraigned, that he had thought they should be all
through before half past five; that then they would have "cleared up," and
have been well across the pasture, out of Margaret's way. Horace did not
know that watched pots are "mighty unsartin" in their times of boiling.
Now all this row, leading to great unpopularity of the boys in regions
where they wanted to be conciliatory, would have been avoided if Horace
and Enoch had merely kept out of the way. There were the Kendal-house in
the back-yard, or the wood-shed, where they could have cleaned the guns,
and then nobody would have minded if they had spilled ten quarts of water.
This seems like a minor rule. But I have put it first, because a good deal
of comfort or discomfort hangs on it.
Scientifically, the first rule would be,
Save Time.
This can only be done by system. A vacation is gold, you see, if properly
used; it is distilled gold,--if there could be such,--to be correct, it is
burnished, double-refined gold, or gold purified. It cannot be lengthened.
There is sure to be too little of it. So you must make sure of all there
is; and this requires system.
It requires, therefore, that, first of all,--even before the term time is
over,--you all determine very solemnly what the great central business of
the vacation shall be. Shall it be an archery club? Or will we build the
Falcon's Nest in the buttonwood over on the Strail? Or shall it be some
other sport or entertainment?
Let this be decided with great care; and, once decided, hang to this
determination, doing something determined about it every living day. In
truth, I recommend application to that business with a good deal of
firmness, on every day, rain or shine, even at certain fixed hours;
unless, of course, there is some general engagement of the family, or of
the neighborhood, which interferes. If you are all going on a lily party,
why, that will take precedence.
Then I recommend, that, quite distinct from this, you make up your own
personal and separate mind as to what is the thing which you yourself have
most hungered and thirsted for in the last term, but have not been able to
do to your mind, because the school work interfered so badly. Some such
thing, I have no doubt, there is. You wanted to make some electrotype
medals, as good as that first-rate one that Muldair copied when he lived
in Paxton. Or you want to make some plaster casts. Or you want to read
some particular book or books. Or you want to use John's tool-box for some
very definite and attractive purpose. Very well; take this up also, for
your individual or special business. The other is the business of the
crowd; this is your avocation when you are away from the crowd. I say
away; I mean it is something you can do without having to hunt them up,
and coax them to go on with you.
Besides these, of course there is all the home life. You have the garden
to work in. You can help your mother wash the tea things. You can make
cake, if you keep on the blind side of old Rosamond; and so on.
Thus are you triply armed. Indeed, I know no life which gets on
well, unless it has these three sides, whether life with the others,
life by yourself, or such life as may come without any plan or
effort of your own.
No; I do not know which of these things you will choose,--perhaps you will
choose none of them. But it is easy enough to see how fast a day of
vacation will go by if you, Stephen, or you, Clara, have these several
resources or determinations.
Here is the ground-plan of it, as I might steal it from Fanchon's
journals:--
"TUESDAY.--Second day of vacation. Fair. Wind west. Thermometer
sixty-three degrees, before breakfast.
"Down stairs in time." [_Mem._ 1. Be careful about this. It makes much
more disturbance in the household than you think for, if you are late to
breakfast, and it sets back the day terribly.]
"Wiped while Sarah washed. Herbert read us the new number of 'Tig and
Tag,' while we did this, and made us scream, by acting it with Silas,
behind the sofa and on the chairs. At nine, all was done, and we went up
the pasture to Mont Blanc. Worked all the morning on the drawbridge. We
have got the two large logs into place, and have dug out part of the
trench. Home at one, quite tired."
[_Mem._ 2. Mont Blanc is a great boulder,--part of a park of boulders, in
the edge of the wood-lot. Other similar rocks are named the "Jung-frau,"
because unclimbable, the "_Aiguilles_" &c. This about the drawbridge and
logs, readers will understand as well as I do.]
"Had just time to dress for dinner. Mr. Links, or Lynch, was here; a _very
interesting_ man, who has descended an extinct volcano. He is going to
give me some Pele's hair. I think I shall make a museum. After dinner we
all sat on the piazza some time, till he went away. Then I came up here,
and fixed my drawers. I have moved my bed to the other side of the
chamber. This gives me a _great deal more room_. Then I got out my
palette, and washed it, and my colors. I am going to paint a cluster of
grape-leaves for mamma's birthday. It is _a great secret_. I had only got
the things well out, when the Fosdicks came, and proposed we should all
ride over with them to Worcester, where Houdin, the juggler, was. Such a
splendid time as we have had! How he does some of the things I do not
know. I brought home a flag and three great peppermints for Pet. We did
not get home _till nearly eleven._"
[_Mem._ 3. This is pretty late for young people of your age; but, as
Madame Roland said, a good deal has to be pardoned to the spirit of
liberty; and, so far as I have observed, in this time, generally is.]
Now if you will analyze that bit of journal, you will see, first, that the
day is full of what Mr. Clough calls
"The joy of eventful living."
That girl never will give anybody cause to say she is tired of her
vacations, if she can spend them in that fashion. You will see, next, that
it is all in system, and, as it happens, just on the system I proposed.
For you will observe that there is the great plan, with others, of the
fortress, the drawbridge, and all that; there is the separate plan for
Fanchon's self, of the water-color picture; and, lastly, there is the
unplanned surrender to the accident of the Fosdicks coming round to
propose Houdin.
Will you observe, lastly, that Fanchon is not selfish in these matters,
but lends a hand where she finds an opportunity?