HUNTING A HOLIDAY. 



MARGUERITE TRACY. 



When, with the beautiful assurance of 

 youth, I set myself to mapping out holidays 

 for busy men who could not go far from 

 New York, I turned immediately to the 

 happy hunting lands of Virginia, and pin- 

 ning my faith to those F. F. V.'s among 

 sportsmen, Hon. John S. Wise, Major Sully, 

 and Colonel Carter, I set out for the Old 

 Dominion. I should say on the Old Do- 

 minion. 



My holiday began when I set foot on the 

 deck. This is the great advantage of sea 

 travel. With the usual holiday the vaca- 

 tioner works so hard to prepare for it and 

 spends so much time in getting to his des- 

 tination that it scarcely pays him. The true 

 apotheosis of holiday is to make no prepara- 

 tion, but to pick up rod and gun, go down 

 to the dock */> an hour before the boat 

 leaves, and loaf around watching other peo- 

 ple hurry. In this way the holiday begins at 

 the beginning. No sane man taking a holi- 

 day would travel by rail if he could travel 

 by sea. 



I took Virginia with me instead of the rod 

 and gun, because we have been together so 

 much that I miss the point of everything 

 when she is not with me to share it. Vir- 

 ginia said she was a good sailor. Yacht- 

 ing figured in her early history, where her 

 salary figures now. She traded a steamer 

 chair for an editorial one about 3 years ago, 

 and she now knows more about circulation 

 than about navigation. 



We were not really on a holiday. I was 

 going down to map out holidays for other 

 people, and Virginia was going down be- 

 cause I was. Besides having me she had a 

 typewriter, which God rest, and may I never 

 look upon its case again. Like the papers 

 that children tie on the tail of a kite, bunches 

 of manuscript followed Virginia by express 

 and arrived at inopportune times when I had 

 planned other work — higher literary flights 

 — for Virginia. I noticed the percentage of 

 manuscripts accepted under these conditions 

 was small. 



" How to Take a Short Holiday," was the 

 watchword which guided me. Whenever 

 Virginia wanted to go off at a tangent or to 

 explore some new and beguiling nook 

 around the point, accompaired by an officer 

 of the line, I sternly recalled her to the 

 matter in hand. Virginia says the matter in 

 hand was my camera. 



" We came down by boat,'* Virginia 

 would say proudly to our friends. An elo- 

 cutionist could vainly spend years in trying 

 to say it as Virginia did. It was the tone 

 that makes you feel if you have not done 

 that particular thing your life has been a 

 vain and thankless effort in the wrong di- 

 rection. 



Shades of a ton of magazines! We went 

 by boat. We may not have carried our 

 hearts on our sleeves, but we carried our 

 calling on ship board and the purser will tell 

 you how much that was worth. We would 

 be visiting the sick soldiers, and sick sol- 

 diers need reading matter and the generosity 

 of editors is mentioned in the Bible — 



(The Lord loveth a cheerful giver.) 



Those magazines began in the purser's 

 office, continued in an empty stateroom, and 

 concluded on every available inch of space 

 in our stateroom. There was a suspicion 

 on board that we were going to Old Point 

 to set up a news stand in competition with 

 the legitimate trade. On my return, when 

 I put my head in at the office grating and 

 asked for a stateroom, the purser looked at 

 me suspiciously and asked: 



" Do you still have those magazines? " 



Reassured on this point he fell to quarrel- 

 ling with me for not having sent him word 

 to reserve my stateroom, as the best he 

 could do for me was an inside one. Inside 

 or out, above or below, on that little rose- 

 wood palace, was immaterial to me. My 

 time was spent on deck, watching the coast, 

 dotted with the self-important Jersey cot- 

 tages, until the Captain went up into the 

 pilot house and the dreary white cliffs of 

 New York 27-story buildings frowned across 

 our bows. But that was the home stretch. 



On the way down Virginia got me up to 

 see the sunrise, out of sight of land. It was 

 worth while. Everything is, on the water. 

 I wouldn't take many things in exchange for 

 the evening on the pilot house top, with the 

 phosphorescence whitening our wake and 

 the long, languid ripple of the water at the 

 bow. I wouldn't have missed meeting the 

 Captain, for Virginian hospitality begins at 

 North River, when you set foot on an Old 

 Dominion liner. How could it be other- 

 wise, with a name like that? 



Virginia is the most unreconstructed lit- 

 tle rebel in the Union, and she gave a sigh 

 of pure content when she saw the label with 

 the charmed name going on her trunk. I 

 had a great deal of anxiety about Virginia 

 when we reached Fort Monroe. She in- 

 sisted on wearing Confederate Army but- 

 tons on her belt. I stood well in front of her 

 whenever the Adjutant of the Port, passed 

 us in the halls of the hotel. 



The Chamberlin is the first house on the 

 left after you leave New York, all the hotels 

 and cottages being to the right as you pass 

 down the coast. If you are as wise as Vir- 

 ginia and I pride ourselves on being you 

 will go no farther. We left the magazines 

 in possession of the dock and our traps in 

 charge of the Porter Plenipotentiary and 



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