These improvements are possible at once. There are others longer in the doing which are also necessary. People must be educated not only to be wage-earners but to enjoy their being. They too much depend on stimulants, on some outside excitement always liable to excess. They might find pleasure in themselves, in the use of their own faculties, in their powers of observation or activity, in their own intelligence and curiosity. They might with better education be “good company” for themselves and for one another. The people possess in Hampstead Heath a property a king might envy, but they only partially enjoy its opportunities. SAMUEL A. BARNETT. HOLIDAYS AND SCHOOLDAYS.[1] BY CANON BARNETT. July, 1911. [1] From “The Daily Telegraph”. By permission of the Editor. Holidays, as well as schooldays, help to form the minds of the citizens. Habits, tastes, friendships, are fixed in the hours when restraints are relaxed, and the Will takes its shape when it is most free. Our school holidays, when in play we commanded or obeyed, when we learnt to know the country sights and objects, when, with different companions, we travelled to new places, have been largely responsible for such satisfaction as we have found in life. Men and women are what their holidays have made them, and a nation’s use of its holidays may almost be said to determine its position in the world’s order of greatness. A nation whose pleasures are coarse and brutal, whose people delight in the excitement of their senses by actions in which their minds take no part, and where solitude is unendurable, can hardly do great things. It is not likely that it will be remembered, as the poets are remembered, by its care for any principle of action. It will hardly be generous in its foreign policy or happy in its homes. The use of holidays is thus most important, and everywhere there are signs of their increase. The schools for the richer classes lengthen the period of their vacations till they extend, in some cases, to a quarter of the year. The King asked that his Coronation year may be marked by an extra week of exemption from school. Business people shorten hours of business, and workmen’s organizations demand more time for holidays. Seaside resorts grow up which live mainly by the pleasures of the people, and a vast and increasing body of workers find employment in the provision of amusement. More time and more money are being given to holidays. Their use or misuse is a matter of importance, and it is reasonable to demand that more thought should also be given to this subject. People--this fact is often forgotten--need to be taught to play as they need to be taught to earn or to love. Leisure is as likely to produce weariness as joy, and the Devil still finds most of his occupation among the idlers.