June 18.
Dragon Festivals bring thoughts of summer holidays. There are people who say with pride that for them vacations are never necessary. But, even if this be not a pose, most of us are not so fortunate. The business hours out here may not be so long and strenuous as at Home, but the climate is more trying and the whirl in which we live puts a constant nervous strain even upon the strongest, one of the first signs being a tendency to sleeplessness.
Where then shall we go? The first need of a holiday is obviously a decided change in the physical environment. Persons who live near the sea should go to an inland resort; those on low-lying plains to the mountains, and so forth. For this reason, probably, residents of Shanghai should go to the mountains, but we admit there may be a difference of opinion on this point. The dead level of Shanghai and its surroundings is to some an inspiration and comfort, a feeling which is finely expressed in Sidney Lanier's poem, The Marshes of Glynn.'' To others flat. country is always depressing. Dr. Arnold, the famous headmaster, found the scenery of Rugby absolutely repulsive. ''We have no hills," he lamented, ''not a single wood and but one single copse; no heath, no rock, no river, no clear stream, scarcely any flowers, nothing -but one endless monotony of enclosed fields and hedgerow trees.'' So he bought a home in the Lake district, Westmoreland, and amid its romantic scenery he was happy for he found what his- nature craved. In the choice between mountains and plains, each in-ere must be a law unto himself.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.