A SEASIDE VACATION.

Otaki Mail, 4 January 1922, Page 4

A SEASIDE VACATION.

♦ j Human nature is a curious thing, ■ \yrites"""a correspondent] We always | seem to want what we have not got at tlie moment, i was visiting, some friends the other day, who have a most charming home with the daintiest of appointments, a garden which is a delight, a comlortable car, a competent servant, and everything in life to make them happy. Hut their ; ft'hble talk was of their "shack" at the seaside, and they ran me down to it lor a week-end. How they could put up with it ali was a mystery to me. The whole "family crowded into three tiny rooms?'sleeping in bunk* one above the other in close rooms; ! wretched, uncomfortable chairs (nut an armchair in the place where one could loll); coarse crockery, horrible , knives and forks; bare walls; cooking | done under the greatest difliculties; none of-the labour-saving devices of the home. No pretty shrubs about the place, no garden, nu shelter; and yet the whole family so pleased with themselves und the place tbat you > would have thought they had just I come into a legacy, if they were forced to live in such a place their grievance would swell to heaven; but '.they do it ol otheir own free will, I and they adore it.

This perversity is one of the very earliest trails we humans develop. Give the baby the costliest toy you call buy, and he will throw it down and scream for some ugly image you have upon the mantelpiece. Make a long list of forbidden things for your boy, and tie will sample them every one. Tell your girl exactly all the things she ought to do, and she win spend a good deal oi time evading them. We all want to get out of the rut and away from the beaten track, and want to throw off the shackfes (or at any rate loosen them) for a little while.

Few things look more absurd than the bare-legged, bald-headed, stoutisli family man at the seaside; but it is the poor mail's yearly protest against the ever-dnereasing demands of an exacting civilisation. He can defy them for a few weeks, and approximate to the savage state.