A SEASIDE VACATION.

Shannon News, 30 December 1921, Page 2

A SEASIDE VACATION.

Human nature is a curious thing, wuites a correspondent. We. always see into want 'what we have not got at the 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 comfortable car, a competent servant, and everything in -

life to make them happy. But their whole talk was of their “shack” at the seaside, and they ran me down to it for a week-end. How they could put up with it all was a mystery to me. The whole family crowded into three tiny rooms, sleeping in bunks one above the other in close rooms; wretched, uncomfortable chairs (not an armchair in the place where one could loll); coarse crockery, horrible knives and forks; bare walls; cooking done under the greatest difficulties; none of the. labour-saving devices of the home. No pretty shrubs about the place, no garden, no shelter; and yet the whole family so pleased with themselves jand the place that you would have thought theyy had just come into a legacy. If they were forced to live in such a place their grievance would swell to heaven; hut they do it of otheir own free will, and they adore it. This perversity is one of the very earliest traits we humans developGive the baby the costliest toy you can 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 he will sample them every one. Tell your girl exactly all the things she ought to do, and she will spend a good deal of time evading them. We all want to get out of the rut and away from the beaten track, arid want to throw off the shackles (or at any rate loosen them) for a little while.

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