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.