DECEMBER 4
"There are only two rules for a successful holiday; the first is to earn it, the second is to have just enough holiday to make the prospect of work pleasant. Periods of rest we all need, but labour and not rest is the synonym of life. From these periods of rest we should return with a new appetite for the duties of common life. If we return dissatisfied, enervated, without heart for work, we may be sure our holiday has been a failure. If we return with the feeling that it is good to plunge into the mid-stream of life again, we may know by this sign that we are morally braced and strengthened by our exodus. The wise man will never allow his holiday to be a time of mere idleness. He will turn again to the books that interest him, he will touch the fringe of some science for which his holiday gives him opportunity, or he will plunge into physical recreation, and shake off the evil humours of the body in active exercise. The failure of holidays lies very much in the fact that nothing of this sort is attempted. The holiday is simply a series of aimless days, and the natural result is ennui. The supreme purpose of a holiday should be to regain possession of ourselves. He who does this comes back from his holiday as from a sanctuary."
W. J. Dawson.
DECEMBER 5
"But what strange art, what magic can dispose
The troubled mind to change its native woes?
Or lead us willing from ourselves, to see
Others more wretched, more undone than we?
This, Books can do;—nor this alone, they give
New views to life, and teach us how to live;
They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise,
Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise:
Their aid they yield to all: they never shun
The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone:
Unlike the hard, the selfish and the proud,
They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd;
Nor tell to various people various things,
But show to subjects, what they show to kings."
The Library, Crabbe.
DECEMBER 6