When a man says to himself that he must have a holiday he means that he
must see quite new things that are also old: he desires to open that
door which stood wide like a window in childhood and is now shut fast.
But where are the new things that are also the old? Paradoxical fellows
who deserve drowning tell one that they are at our very doors. Well,
that is true of the eager mind, but the mind is no longer eager when it
is in need of a holiday. And you can get at the new things that are also
the old by way of drugs, but drugs are a poor sort of holiday fabric. If
you have stored up your memory well with much experience you can get
these things from your memory--but only in a pale sort of way.

I think the best avenue to recreation by the magical impressions of the
world upon the mind is this: To go to some place to which the common
road leads you and then to get just off the common road. You will be
astonished to find how strange the world becomes in the first mile--and
how strange it remains till the common road is reached again.

It always sounds like a mockery for a man who has travelled to a great
many places, as I have, to advise his fellows to travel abroad; they are
most of them hard tied. Yet it is really a much easier thing than men
bound to the desk and the workshop understand. Britain is but one great
port, and its inward seas are narrow--and the fares are ridiculously
low. If you are a young man you can go almost anywhere for almost
anything, sitting up by night on deck, and not expecting too much
courtesy. But, of course, if you shirk the sea you are a prisoner.

Well, then, supposing you abroad, or even in some other part of this
highly varied kingdom in which you live, and supposing you to have
reached some chosen place by some common road--what I desire to dilate
upon here is the truth which every little excursion of business or of