AT LAST!
(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!