July lo, 19 1 5 
LAND AND WATER 
A CHANGE OF SCENE 
BY 
Mrs. eric DE RIDDER 
IX any other year but this people would have their 
phns all ready cut and dried for the summer holiday, 
which is a necessity of life to many. As it is from all 
indications there will still be a holiday season, only 
it will b2 a holiday season with a difference. People will 
seek a change of scene and surrounding more from sheer 
necessity than from the diversion point of view. Men and 
women alike have in many cases worked themselves to a 
standstill, undergone great stress of anxiety and strain, 
and in consequence the need for relaxation of some sort is 
a vital one. 
This year, without doubt, many will get to know their 
mother country in a way they have never done before. Tlie 
continent being practically a sealed book to the traveller, 
and travelling in all other directions difficult and hazard- 
ous, must mean a focus of attention on our native land. The 
result cannot fail to be a delightful one. There are beauty 
spots in the British Isles which are second to none, the opportu- 
nity has arrived for many to explore them, who formerly 
would never have made or seized it. Of late years the 
fashion has sprung up amongst many people never to imagine 
they had taken a holiday without wandering far from these 
shores. Unless they took the boat train to some place on 
oiu" coast, and there embarked upon a steamer for some foreign 
port the change of air was in their opinion incomplete. Armed 
with the familiar small green wallets with a collection of 
tickets inside, provided with foreign monej-, faced with the 
immediate necessity of having their luggage turned inside 
out and ransacked by a ruthless Custom House officer, they 
started confidently on their way. The treadmill of events, 
this year, has voted against any such complications. Travelling 
will be simplicity itself, it will practically begin and end 
with the purchase of a ticket at the railway booking office 
ten minutes or so before the train departs. Even the most 
seasoned traveller may find an unexpected voice within him 
rejoicing at the change. 
Strenuous Visiting 
Though much has been shaken to its foundations, hfe 
in many a country house would seem to the casual observer 
to be undisturbed. There is still a considerable amount of 
quiet entertaining, visitors come and go, the week-end trains 
still bring their quota of guests. It is only when one peers 
more closely into existing conditions that one sees that though 
things to all intents and purposes are going on much the 
same as usual, in reality they are altered as fundamentally 
as though shaken by an avalanche. People's outlooks are 
altered, the even tenour of their ways has been rudely dis- 
turbed. The country house visitor now mainly justifies 
her existence by the practical help she is able to give. There 
is no room for the idle butterfly about whose diaphanous 
wings so much nonsense has been written in the past. That 
it is nonsense has been proved by her disappearance. The 
gaily-coloured butterfly has vanished into the brown moth, 
though the latter is blue more often than not, wearing the 
dark blue coat and the blue and white hat of the Red Cross 
persuasipn, or some kindred body. 
Many an unwary mortal hoping to escape for a while 
from her own daily round and common task has arrived at 
a sunlit country house in the growing glamour of a summer 
evening to find her hostess busily making and rolling bandciges, 
or some such work. She assuredly will be at once pressed 
into the service. Or she may find that a nurse has suddenly 
had to go off duty at a neighbouring V.A.D. hospital, 
and that a substitute must be immediately found, with 
the finger of fate pointing straight at her humble self. There 
is only one justification for her existence as a visitor, that 
being that she can lend a hand in some pet scheme or project. 
A change of scene, when carried out beneath a friendly roof, 
is rarely now-a-days anything in the shape of a rest cure, nor 
will it be while ninety-nine women out of every hundred are 
busily engaged in war activities of some description or another. 
Quiet Spots 
Those therefore who feel that a complete rest of body 
and mind has become essential to their well-being should 
be wary and seek some quiet spot far removed from their 
friends and acquaintances. They should take the train to 
some quiet seaside place on a " safe " corner of the coast, 
and there in some serene spot within sight of the sea, rest 
in solid earnest. There are attractive seaside hostels far 
removed from the usual blare and noise of a hotel. Hotels, 
which are to all intents and purposes like some great country 
house, quiet, dignified, reposeful. There is one hotel in par- 
ticular on the South Coast, which lies by the side of a harbour, 
where yachts of small tonnage continually pass in and out. 
It has a lawn stretching towards the narrow beach — for 
it is a small unpretentious spot — a great hall, a wonderful 
oak staircase, which winds upwards to a surrounding gallery. 
It is ideal for the special type of holiday many of us are 
needing this year. 
Then there are still, even in these sophisticated days, 
farmhouses where rooms can be hired and a week or so 
pleasantly spent in appropriately rural surroundings. There 
will probably be more interest than has ever been known before 
in these placid places, for harvest wiU be soon with us, and 
the harvesters from all accounts are going to be a varied 
lot. The farm house visitor will more likely than not feel 
the lure of the harvest field and lend a hand, too. It will 
be very strange, very interesting, and the surest form of tonic 
for a jaded brain and nerve. \ holiday in a country village, 
which has not yet fallen under the ban of modern red brick 
villadom can be a very agreeable one. With bedroom windows 
opened to their far extent overlooking some lovely part of 
pastoral England, with the fragrance of creepers, shrubs 
and flowers in the air, with the hundred and one sounds 
that are in reality minute but sound immense in the country 
stillness, life is still worth living, and an idyllic existence 
a possibility. 
Tlie Younger Qeneration 
From the children's point of view some sort of a holiday 
is a necessity. Tlie small fry keenly appreciate the weeks 
they spend in happy freedom on the seashore or in the country 
meadows, and few grown-up folk no matter how sad and 
listless they feel themselves will care to deprive them of 
this fleeting happiness. 
The question of expense comes into holiday-making 
as it comes into most things this year, but people are prepared 
to take any pleasure they can snatch cheaply, and many 
a holiday will be achieved at half the cost of those of recent 
years. So it seems as if in many cases the children are to have 
their holiday in spite of ever3rthing, and that the beach of 
many a pleasant seaside town will be covered with energetic 
youngsters, bare-legged and sunburnt, building wondrous 
palaces with pebbles and sand. And those who are obliged 
to stay at home will doubtless have their holiday season 
also, spent in familiar places though it be. Many parents, 
no matter how fuUy occupied they may be with affairs inside 
and out, will strive to make it something like the old holiday 
days of yore, though a peregrination to the seaside is no 
longer a matter of course which can be firmly and confidently 
anticipated by the nursery folk. It takes very little to make 
a child happy, and in these days when depression is a fatally 
easy thing, the smiling faces of small important people in 
brief suits and pinafores, are as welcome as sunshine, and 
as beneficial. 
249 
