town-life the reverse, and when an occasion comes
for quitting London there are few members of what the French call the
"easy class" who have not a collection of dull, moist, verdant resorts
to choose from. Dull I call them, and I fancy not without reason, though
at the moment I speak of their dullness must have been mitigated by the
unintermittent presence of the keenest and liveliest of east winds. Even
in mellow English country homes Easter-tide is a period of rawness and
atmospheric acridity--the moment at which the frank hostility of winter,
which has at last to give up the game, turns to peevishness and spite.
This is what makes it arbitrary, as I said just now, for "easy" people
to go forth to the wind-swept lawns and the shivering parks. But nothing
is more striking to an American than the frequency of English holidays
and the large way in which occasions for change and diversion are made
use of. All this speaks to Americans of three things which they are
accustomed to see allotted in scantier measure. The English have more
time than we, they have more money, and they have a much higher relish
for holiday taking. (I am speaking of course always of the "easy
classes.") Leisure, fortune and the love of sport--these things are
implied in English society at every turn. It was a very small number of
weeks before Easter that Parliament met, and yet a ten days' recess was
already, from the luxurious Parliamentary point of view, a necessity. A
short time hence we shall be having the Whitsuntide Holidays, which I am
told are even more of a festival than Easter, and from this point to
midsummer, when everything stops, it is an easy journey. The business
men and the professional men partake in equal measure of these agreeable
diversions, and I was amused at hearing a lady whose husband was an
active member of the bar say that, though he was leaving town with her
for ten days and though Easter was a very nice bit of idleness, they
really amused themselves with more gusto in the later recess, which
would come on toward the end of May. I thought this highly probable, and
admired so picturesque a chiaroscuro of work and play. If my phrase has
a slightly ironical sound this is purely accidental. A large appetite
for holidays, the ability not only to take them but to know what to do
with them when taken, is the sign of a robust people, and judged by this
measure we Americans are rather ill-conditioned. Such holidays as we
take ar