3-066-099 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Children's Day in the Country: Signal for Departure, 1881. Summer excursions 'for children of the schools attached to parish churches...[in London which] send forth several vans loaded with happy boys and girls...to some field or park in the Home Counties, or even to the seaside, where five or six hours can be passed in hearty enjoyment of fresh scenes and sports of an innocent kind. The fresh pure air, the liberty of romping on the grass, the delight of coming into the presence of rural nature, for which all city-bred youth must yearn with an intense longing, scarcely to be allayed by getting now and then into the London Parks, are calculated to do them an infinite amount of good...[The sketch illustrates] the contrivance of sending up little balloons of diverse colours as a signal for departure'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.