3-070-589 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A Day in the Country, 1883. 'Before the start a penny to spend; left behind; in full swing; flowers from the country...the Artist...has evidently been drawing a moral; he wishes to make it plain that poor folk who always stay in town are likely to be wretched, and perhaps more likely to be wicked, than people of the same class who are permitted to enjoy themselves, now and then, in the fields and woods, as we all like to do. It is, in short, a pictorial plea for excursion parties, cheap trips, Bank Holidays, Easter Holidays, and Whitsuntide Holidays, Early Closing Saturday Afternoons, school children's rural feasts, and every such beneficent provision to allow the toilers, drudgers, and grabbers of this great city a few hours' innocent freedom amidst the pleasant sights and the delightful sounds and scenes of summer, anywhere out of London - in Epping Forest, it may be, or on the breezy heights of Riddlesdown in Surrey, or on Hayes-common, or that of Plumstead, or at Abbey Wood, in Kent, or at Hampstead Heath or Hendon, or in some park or meadow lent by a private owner where the poor people, men, women, and children, may find consolation for life-long troubles in a brief taste of the kindness of Nature, so good and sweet to us all'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.