I liked their fondness
for their own so much that I never could feel the fine scorn for
"trippers" which I believe all persons of condition ought to
assume. Even when the trippers did not seem very intelligently
interested in what they saw, they were harmlessly employed, for a
scene of beauty, or of historic appeal, could not be desecrated
by the courtships which are constantly going on all over England,
especially at the holiday seasons.
The English are, indeed, great holiday-makers, even when past the
age of putting their arms around one another's waists. The many
and many seaside resorts form the place of their favorite
outings, where they try to spend such days and weeks of the late
summer as their savings will pay for. It is said that families in
very humble station save the year round for these vacations, and,
having put by twelve or fifteen pounds, repair to some such
waterside as Blackpool, or its analogue in their neighborhood,
and lavish them upon the brief joy of the time. They take the
cheaper lodgings, and bring with them the less perishable
provisions, and lead a life of resolute gayety on the sands and
in the sea, and at the pier-ends where the negro minstrels and
the Pierrots, who equally abound, make the afternoons and
evenings a delight which no one would suspect from their faces to
be the wild thing it is.
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