Holidays.

"Where shall we spend the holidays?" has doubtless been discussed in many households, by both parents and children,—I wonder if the children followed it up by a still more important question, "How shall I spend the holidays?" Just at the close of a term you will not want me to suggest anything that is like lessons, but at the same time I do not see why you should spend seven weeks in idleness and novel-reading, any more than you would live for seven weeks on puddings and sweets. You like plenty of sweets, and I hope you will get them, but I hope you will have meat as well!

There are many books which are not novels, and which you would yet enjoy,—books which would send you back more thoughtful; and though you might not know any one lesson better next term because of having read them, yet you would be a step nearer to being the sort of women you would like to be. I dare say when you go for your holiday you will get something to read at the station bookstall. Now, several of the books I mean can be got there, as easily as yellow novels, and can be got for the price of Punch; they are so small you could have them in your pocket and get them read in odds and ends of time, out-of-doors, so that you need not miss any expedition, or any fresh air, through staying in the house to study. In the same way you could get some really good poem for a penny, and learn it by heart. Nothing would please me so much as if you all brought me next term the name of some book you had read, of this kind, and repeated to me a poem of the sort that you think I should like—which very likely is not the sort you like, as yet. It would do you good, whether you enjoyed it or not, for you would be teaching yourselves to like the better kind of books if you persevered with it, and your holidays would be pleasanter, as well as better, if there was some effort of this kind to give backbone to each day. Cooks say there should be a pinch of salt in everything you eat, and I am sure we ought to have a pinch of the moral salt of self-conquest in each day, just to keep it sweet and good.

Perhaps you will think I am always wanting you to read, and you would like to remind me that there are many other commendable pursuits. I certainly am rather of the opinion Lowell expresses in "Democracy." He says, "Southey, in his walk one stormy day, met an old woman, to whom, by way of greeting, he made the rather obvious remark that it was dreadful weather. She answered, philosophically, that, in her opinion, \'any sort of weather was better than none!\'" I should be half inclined to say that any reading was better than none.

Yet you are quite right about those other pursuits, and I hope you will follow them; but at the same time, if you have not already got a taste for reading, it is the most important of all tastes for you to strive to acquire, as it is very doubtful if you will manage otherwise to do so in later life. I should pity you terribly if you failed to acquire it, for you will all find life hard in one way or another, and you will find that a love of reading is even more valuable than a sense of humour in helping you over rough places. And—over and above the minor, more "worldly" support of its power of amusing and interesting you, even in the most "set grey life"—it is linked to those higher helps, without which, neither reading nor anything else will do us much good. St. Hugh of Lincoln made much of good books because he said they "made illness and sorrow endurable," and, besides this, they save you from many temptations. It has been well said, "It is very hard for a person who does not like reading to talk without sinning…. Reading hinders castle-building, which is an inward disease, wholly incompatible with devotion…. Towards afternoon a person who has nothing to do drifts rapidly away from God. To sit down in a chair without an object is to jump into a thicket of temptation. A vacant hour is always the devil\'s hour. Then a book is a strong tower, nay, a very church, with angels lurking among the leaves."

But although I must allow reading to be my special hobby,—one, however, which is run very hard in my affections by both cooking and gardening,—still I quite appreciate other hobbies, and I should be quite as much pleased next term if, instead of telling me about books read and bringing me a piece of poetry learnt (by-the-by, I do very much wish you would all learn Wordsworth\'s "Ode to Duty" during the holidays)—if, instead of this, you showed me collections of wild flowers or shells. A little time ago I saw a charming book of dried flowers, collected by a set of children just out of a kindergarten. Each flower had a page to itself, with its name neatly written, and any extra local names which it happened to possess. On the opposite page was written any verses of poetry that the children could find about it; and I was quite surprised to see what a good collection they had of bits from Tennyson and Shakespeare and Wordsworth, etc. Of course, the older sisters and the mothers must have helped them in this part, but such a book, made in the holidays, would be the work of the whole family, so you would have plenty of help; and you will notice that the poetical part of it is a special attraction to me, as it affords exercise to my own hobby both in reading and in verifying quotations.

I think I had better here give you warning that when you come back next term every one will have to write an essay, describing some one place they have been to during the holidays. I tell you now, that you may try to find out all you can of the real interest of the place; its historical, or legendary, or literary associations, or its flowers, or shells, or fossils.

There is one other point of holiday-making on which I should like to talk to you. Some of you may have read Charles Lamb\'s amusing essay on "Popular Fallacies;" I suppose every one could add to his list from their own experience of life. One of the popular fallacies I should like to combat is, that "holidays are \'the children\'s hour;\'" though I quite allow that, like most popular fallacies, it has many grains of truth in it. The little victims consider that conscientious application to grammar and history deserves a compensating course of lying in bed in the morning, sitting up late at night, and general indulgence, with every right-minded member of the household waiting upon them, and making plans for their amusement. Now, I quite see their side of the question. It is not pleasant, day after day, to go on steadily with work, which you do not happen to care for; to be cut off from this or that expedition, because lessons interfere; to have to get up early every morning; to lose this or that visit;—and, therefore, I hope your holidays may be full of fun, and that you may be richly rewarded for any struggles you may have made during the term.

But there is another side of it all, and term-time is "the children\'s hour," from one point of view.

Instead of the term being, for children, a time of self-denial, and the holidays, a time of well-earned self-indulgence,—I feel that term-time means self-denial for the parents, and selfishness for the children. Do not misunderstand me; the selfishness which I mean is forced upon you,—it is your duty, in term-time, to put lessons first. It may very well be that some of you feel you were wrongly ............