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gamble. You can't say how much it will cost. The only thing at all certain about it is that the cost will be more than you can afford. Wherever you go you become a goose to be plucked." Let us rebel against this iniquity! It is not a question of cheating, it is a trait of the national character. In Great Britain, as among the Americans, the gift of long sight in business has become very common, and few persons think it worth their while to see the practical good things within easy reach of the blessed short sight of common sense. Our chief aim is not to keep a market open and steady, but to glut it with over-production or to block it with excessive prices. "Here is a holiday-tripper, so let us make him pay!" That seems to be the unconquerable maxim at all seaside resorts and in every place where tired workers seek rest and health. I have known a week's holiday in the New Forest to cost as much as a tour of three weeks in the beautiful and bracing Ardennes. The Belgian is content to draw his customers back to him, while the Englishman grasps all he can get and sends us away discontented. It is true that the railway companies are doing all in their power to make holidays at home welcome and inexpensive. Their enterprise in this respect has no limits. But we cannot live on cheap railway tickets alone, whether single or return. Something should be done--and the newspapers could help--to establish in all attractive districts a reasonable tariff for board and lodging. It is only thus that Great Britain will be made popular during the holiday season, and that the great stream of gold--the holiday-making Pactolus--will be drawn from the Continent to nourish our own country sides and rural folk. It seems to be certain that, during the reign of the old stage coach, life in rustic England was cheaper than it is to-day. At any rate we must account in some way or other for the immense number of county histories and illustrated topographical books which teemed from the press from the middle of the eighteenth century to the time of J. M. W. Turner. To study these works is to be sure that our forefathers took the greatest delight in their own country, and that huge sums of money were spent in procuring fine sketches and adequate engravings. Side by side with these books on British topography were volumes on foreign travel, like those by William Alexander, who in 1792 accompanied Lord Macartney's embassy to China,
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