CHAPTER XIII 



HOLIDAYS 



A FEW enjoyable trips abroad have come my 

 way during these later years. My wife and I 

 took a very interesting voyage down the Atlantic and 

 I seem to think we put in a month calling in and out 

 of places like Maderia, Portugal, and then as far as 

 the Canary Islands. This time of crossing the Bay of 

 Biscay the waves gave no trouble. How delightful 

 to travel by sea when weather conditions are good and 

 how miserable one can be when conditions are bad. 

 At the close of the Great War my brother Sam 

 paid us a visit from Canada. Canada in those days 

 was booming, the world was hungry, and this I 

 presume gave her the peak years in growing wheat. 

 What a fall she has sustained since. Well, in those 

 days everyone had a pound or two in his pocket, and 

 we both agreed it would be a mistake to put off the 

 day to pay a visit to the battlefields of France and 

 Belgium until circumstances had relieved us of 

 those few pounds. But it was a never-to-be- 

 forgotten and sorry sight ; any Englishman who still 

 retains a vision of that devastating picture must be 

 ever thankful that battlefields have been absent 

 from his country for centuries. 



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