Keepers' Holidays
In February a few lucky gamekeepers may take a voluntary holiday, many must take an involuntary one—restful, perhaps, but not beneficial to pocket, health, and spirits. Keepers come and keepers go in these days when so many shoots are let for short terms. Resting between berths has one advantage—there can be no haunting worry as to the welfare of game. It would be interesting to collect cases of keepers and other country workers who have held the same berth for long periods, and have never been for a holiday right away from the scenes of their labours. Many and many old keepers would be found to have lived their whole lives on the estates where they were born. The best holiday for keepers would be a change to a bustling town; or they should be sent to a country where game is different to the game at home, the partridge man going to the home of grouse, the moorland keeper to the South.
Most keepers would be the first to say it is impossible that they should take holiday. Their work is peculiarly personal; and even when it is essential to arrange for somebody else to "give an eye to things," they can never feel happy and confident that all is going on in the accustomed way. The work, too, is cumulative—each item must be considered in its relation to several others. Even where there are several keepers, each on his own beat of a shoot, there is a jealous rivalry between them; and any one who went for a holiday would suspect advantage to be taken of his stock of breeding game in his absence. If there is one thing a keeper can endure less than being scored off by a poacher, it is to be scored off by a brother keeper.
