Explore "Saturday Night" by Thomas Burke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The origins of Saturday night, as a social institution, are obscure. No doubt a little research would discover them to the earnest seeker, but I am temperamentally averse from anything like research. It is tedious in process and disappointing in result. Successful research means grasping at the reality and dropping the romance.
The outstanding fact about Saturday night is that it is an exclusively British institution. Neither America nor the Continent knows its precious joys. It is one of the few British institutions that reconcile me to being an islander. It is a festival that is observed with the same casual ritual in the London slums and in Northumberland mining villages; in Scottish hills and in the byways of the Black Country; in Camden Town High Street and in the hamlets of the Welsh marches. Certainly, so long as my aged elders can carry their memories, and the memories of their fathers before them, Saturday night has been a festival recognized in all homely homes. Strange that it has only once been celebrated in literature.