PUBLIC HOLIDAYS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 47, 24 February 1874, Page 2

PUBLIC HOLIDAYS.

To the Editor op the Evening Mail. Sir — Doubtless a holiday is a good thing, but a good thing out of set. son is a questionable benefit. For my part Ido not grudge a servant the Sunday out or the evening out, or a week or even a fortnight in summer time to spend with her fr'eods in the couatry. But I have very serious doubte whether it is a good thing for a number of young women to be turned adrift with their pockets full of money, amid tbe excitement of a steeplechase or race course, and that without their natural guardians and friendß. Hear my experience. I pay a you g lady 12s a week to help my wife with the household work and the children, and in re.urn expect that my wife should not be overworked, and should be able to sit down to dinner without too evident traces of the kitcben. But about once, a fortnight his Honor proclaims a public holiday; and then at nine a.m. there issues from my gates a vision, brilliant, be-jewelled, be-chignonned, be-panniered, high-heeled and Grecian-rbent. Rut evening sees another sight. . About ten p.m. returns an apparition, Borry, draggletailed, limping, "dusty and deliquescent." The holiday has been too short, too universal for aid t > be called iv : from without, too long for a tolerable makeshift. There has been tribulation abd great mourning within the gates aforesaid all that day. ... Some of us. too, even iv Nelson, have work to do, which we* wish to see pushed on. These Irregular holidays »o disturb the minds of the juniors, with whom we have to work, that a quiet Sunday must elapse before a decent da* 's work can be got done. " • These occasional public holidays with their crowds and booths and noise and dust bring excitement without change of scene, exhaustion without exercise, dissipation without enjoyment, and expenditure without return, in fact everything a holiday should not and nothing that it should. Holidays somewhat similar are an institution in Southern Italy and Spain, but these countries are scarcely an object of imitation for this progressive province. . I am, &c, Patebfamilub.