VACATIONS! What a comforting, blessed word. We are entering the season of them and my mind is stirred by memories and visions. How shall I spend mine? Shall I take it in a lump or on the installment plan? Shall I seek the mountains, the plains or the sea? Shall I motor, walk, ride or sail? Or shall I just sit? These are a few of the questions which arise.

In my heart I know that no two summers are alike. They differ in flavor—like cantaloupes. What the coming season will bring forth for me is on the knees of the Gods which must by this time be well-encumbered by the many things reposing on them.

FOR instance! Two families of my acquaintance projected one of those wild, woodsy vacations in the hinterland of the Province of Quebec. They had become very chummy during the long winter evenings at home. They liked each other, heaps. They dined and bridged and theatred extensively. Sally and Tom Robbins, Lucy and Bill Spencer, they formed the perfect and inseparable Four. Then loomed the prospect of this glorious return to Nature. Denying themselves all respite during July and August, Tom and Bill saved their time for September. Came the day when they departed, bag and baggage, duffle and kit, rod and reel . . . such a merry party! The thermos was emptied before they reached Harmon-on-Hudson.

Their destination was one of those conveniently located camps reached by journeying to Montreal, thence to Three Rivers, changing at La Tuque, hopping a "speeder," a small, motor-driven flat-car, on an abandoned branch of the C. P. R., taking a Ford at Tortue, buckboarding to St. Severin, canoeing across Lac aux Dames and hiking a two mile portage to lovely Lake Flambeau. And there you were! Not exactly an overnight trip but so quiet, so peaceful ....

It was. The September rains set in and when September decides to be rainy it does a real job. The installation was what is known as a "rough camp," a tent for the men, another for the girls and a shack for the guides. If you touched the tents on the inside they dripped. The Robbins liked their bacon rare and their coffee weak. The Spencers were all for crisp bacon and strong coffee. Bill wanted to fish early in the morning, whether it rained or not. Tom chose to stick to his sleeping-bag and wait for the sun—which refused to shine. Sally turned her ankle and Lucy ran foul of something queer in a tin of corned-beef hash. After ten days they hit the home trail. Only the guides were speaking. Co-operative vacations are hazardous.

THE BOUNDING MAIN

Another kind of holiday is that spent on a yacht. I did this once. The slogan of the coastwise yachtsman is "Yo heave-ho and a case of Johnny Walker!" The craft upon which I sailed, the sloop "Alley-oop" followed the cruise of one of the Eastern yacht-clubs. My host was Vice-Commodore Fuller, a fine old mahogany finished piece. There were also a Captain, five sailors, a cook, six guests and, I should imagine about a hundred waiters. Our sea-trail from City Island to Bar Harbor was marked for weeks afterward by a well-defined drift of corks, cases, straw covers and bobbing bottles. At ports en route we gave the locals a treat by parading their streets with that nautical roll to our gait peculiar to sailors ashore and land lubbers afloat. We ran on nautical time, six bells, seven bells and a highball to every bell. We wore yachting caps. Our faces were flaming red from long exposure to sun— and other things.

Fuller was quite the prince of hosts. I recall a striking instance of his solicitude. We were drifting out of Newport harbor before a light breeze and the sailors were struggling with a voluminous sail on the end of an unwieldy boom. As the breeze filled it we inclined slightly to starboard. Our host eyed the canvas distrustfully and summoned the Captain.

"Captain Barrows," he said, "what. . . what is that sail?"

"The spinnaker, sir" said the Captain.

"Captain Barrows," said the Commodore, "remove it. I am a plain man, Captain, and I like plain sails. Besides, it spills the drinks."

THE OPEN SPACES

I ONCE had a Western vacation, one of those red-blooded things. That trip would be pleasant to repeat. It would take a stronger horse to carry me now but I am sure one could be found. There is a lot to be said for this roughing it among the cow punchers. It has splendid talking points and sounds so hardy and two-fisted. Actually the plains of Arizona and Wyoming have been fully piped, wired and drained. Comfort and cactus grow side by side. The horses are dude-broke, the saddles are cradles, the pace leisurely, and, just over the horizon, at the end of the sunset trail ... is a hot bath. It's the berries. During my wild western days I rode a liver-and-milk pinto named Tony. I carried a large, unloaded Colt in a holster, a looped lariat and a camera. The camera was the only implement I used. All the visiting ranchers carried them. We shot each other regularly and I still get a kick out of my pictures labeled, "Let'er Buck," . . . thank Heaven she never did . . . "Ride him, Cow-boy!" and "Striking Camp."

Perhaps the best thing about these Western trips is that they endow a man for life with a permanent dress-up rig to wear at fancy-dress parties. There is no more reason for worry on that score, no more saying, "Oh hell, what shall I go as?" Just drag out the old outfit, buckle on your chaps and there you are. I've had my khaki breeches let out twice in the last ten years.

IN LATER years I find fewer notes of extended, independent travel and vacation trips. My holidays assume a more domestic character.

Still retaining my love of Nature I have enjoyed many motor vacations and can heartily recommend them. Though less primitive than the uncharted seas and lone prairies our local by-ways still retain possibilities of adventure, particularly when you are lost on a back-road with a dead flash-light, an empty gas-tank and a flat front-tire. Then, too, there arc the perils of the antique shops which infest the path. Through many a fair village have I steered my way, eyes front, ears deaf to the pleadings of my companion, carefully avoiding the Scylla of hooked-rugs on the one hand and the Charybdis of Windsor chairs on the other. These pilgrimages are invariably fraught with pleasant battles with one's partner as to which road to take. How familiar to every married motorist is the remark, "Why don't you ask? I never knew a man yet who was willing to ask the way!"

OBDURATELY you pursue your route, vituperation being heaped upon you as it gets worse and worse. But O, the joy when you finally strike the macadam again! As you bowl along, cares and recriminations are blown to the breezes. "How's this for a road?" you cry as if you had built it. It is your turn to gloat.

Along the way you may glance at the "hitch-and-hikers" who are spending their vacations at this new and popular pastime of walking as little and riding as much as possible. The ladyhiker is a strange sight, particularly from the rear. Her knickers have an uneasy pulsation, not lovely but instinct with comedy.

PERFECT PEACE

Sometimes I have gone in for a quiet vacation. I tried an Art Colony once, a community of intellect, a group of bungalows tucked away in the hills, a brain to every bungalow. In the embrace of Art were gathered together painters, poets, rhythmic dancers, musicians, craftsmen. During the busy hours of the day the landscape looked like an allegorical decoration for an Academy of the Fine Arts. The painter at his easel gazed at a prospect in which a group of nymphs waited under a tree for their Adonis who had gone to the village in his Ford to get some eggs. A violin wailed from a near-by cottage, a singer practised her scales. But there were too many rules. Jazz was forbidden. There was a curfew hour, and fights among the artists. Intellectuals do not standardize readily and acrimony prevailed where all should have been serene.

For real peace I prefer the old, austere New England village where I have spent part of many vacations, an atmosphere in which the aristocratic natives look with dark suspicion on movies, summer renters, cocktail shakers and batik blouses. Here is true rest. Between the splotches of elm-shade lie pools of sunshine, zinnias gleam along the garden walk, grasshoppers whir in the stubble, a load of hay creaks down the street, the sweetness reaches you through the vines. The paper, fresh folded has just been brought up from the Post Office but you do not look at it. You fall back in the Cape Cod hammock and gaze at the summer sky.