The Long Vacation

The Long Vacation

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Vacation, by Charlotte M.
Yonge (#30 in our series by Charlotte M. Yonge)
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Title: The Long Vacation
Author: Charlotte M. Yonge
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This Project Gutenberg Etext of The Long Vacation, by Charlotte M.
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THE LONG VACATION
BY
CHARLOTTE M. YONGE

How the children leave us, and no traces Linger of that smiling
angel-band, Gone, for ever gone, and in their places Weary men and
anxious women stand. ADELAIDE A. PROCTOR

PREFACE

If a book by an author who must call herself a veteran should be taken
up by readers of a younger generation, they are begged to consider the
first few chapters as a sort of prologue, introduced for the sake of those
of elder years, who were kind enough to be interested in the domestic
politics of the Mohuns and the Underwoods.
Continuations are proverbially failures, and yet it is perhaps a
consequence of the writer's realization of characters that some seem as
if they could not be parted with, and must be carried on in the mind,
and not only have their after-fates described, but their minds and
opinions under the modifications of advancing years and altered
circumstances.
Turner and other artists have been known literally to see colours in
absolutely different hues as they grew older, and so no doubt it is with
thinkers. The outlines may be the same, the tints are insensibly

modified and altered, and the effect thus far changed.
Thus it is with the writers of fiction. The young write in full sympathy
with, as well as for, the young, they have a pensive satisfaction in
feeling and depicting the full pathos of a tragedy, and on the other hand
they delight in their own mirth, and fully share it with the beings of
their imagination, or they work out great questions with the
unhesitating decision of their youth.
But those who write in elder years look on at their young people, not
with inner sympathy but from the outside. Their affections and
comprehension are with the fathers, mothers, and aunts; they dread,
rather than seek, piteous scenes, and they have learnt that there are two
sides to a question, that there are many stages in human life, and that
the success or failure of early enthusiasm leaves a good deal more yet
to come.
Thus the vivid fancy passes away, which the young are carried along
with, and the older feel refreshed by; there is still a sense of experience,
and a pleasure in tracing the perspective from another point of sight,
where what was once distant has become near at hand, the earnest of
many a day-dream has been gained, and more than one ideal has been
tried, and merits and demerits have become apparent.
And thus it is hoped that the Long Vacation may not be devoid of
interest for readers who have sympathized in early days with
Beechcroft, Stoneborough, and Vale Leston, when they were peopled
with the outcome of a youthful mind, and that they may be ready to
look with interest on the perplexities and successes attending on the
matured characters in after years.
If they will feel as if they were on a visit to friends grown older, with
their children about them, and if the young will forgive the seeing with
elder eyes, and observing instead of participating, that is all the veteran
author would ask.
C. M. YONGE.
Elderfield, January 31, 1895.

CONTENTS

I. A

CHAPTER OF

RETROSPECT
II. A
CHAPTER OF
TWADDLE
III.