Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1873-08-14
The Pleasures of the Picnic.

THIS is the season of the year when
picnics are most frequent. For real solid
enjoyment we, for our part, must prefer
we'll conducted funeral to an ordinary
picnic. You generally reach the grounds
about II O'Clock, and the exercises begin
with climbing hill, up which you are
compelled to carry two heavy lunch bas-
kets When you reach the summit you
are positively certain that the thermometer
must be nearly $50 in the shade You
throw yourself on the grass, and in a few
moments brigade of black ants begin to
crawl down the back of your neck, while
phalanx of ticks charge up your trouser
leg. And just as you jump up, your old
est boy, who has been out in the woods,
where he stirred up a yellow-jacket's nest,
comes in with his head and face swelled
| to the size of a water bucket conveying
the information that your other boy,
| William Henry, is up a tree and can't get
down. After laboring to release William
| Henry the thermometer seems to have
| gone up 200 more degrees, and you think
| you Will take a swim in the creek. While
! you are in the water, young Jones strClls
| out with Miss Smith, and unconscious of
your presence they sit down close to your
clothes, and engage il conversation for
three-quarters of an hour, while you lie
down in the shallow stream, afraid to
bulge and nearly killed with the hot sun.
When they leave, you emerge and find
that some wicked boy from the neighbor-
ing village has run off with your shirt and
socks. You fix up as well as you can, and
when you get back with the party they
are eating dinner from cloth laid on the
ground. A spider is spinning a cobweb
from the picklejar to the little end of the
| 81 la la1 frAI, ol-
around over the pound-cake, cater
grasshOppers are jumping into the butter
where they stick fast, the bees are so thick
around the sugar bowl that you are afraid
to 90 near it, and there are enough ants in
the pie to walk completely off with it.
You take seat, however, determined to
try TO eat something, but you get up sud
denly-all at once, as it were, tOryou have
set down on a brer. Then William Hen
ry, who has quaffed an unreasonable guam
| tity Of lemonade gets the collie, and his
mother goes into Mysteries because she
| thinks he is poisoned with pokeberries.
| You lay him under an umbrella, and pro-
coed to climb tree in order to fix swing
for the girls. After skinning your hands,
| tearing your trousers and running your
coat, you get to the top, tie the rope and
undertake to come down on it. You do
come down, with velocity, and your
fingers are rubbed entirely raw. Just then
it begins to rain furiously, and the whole
party stampedes to the depot for shelter
When the shower slackens you go back
to the ground to get the rope, and just as
you get up in the tree the owner of the
place comes along with gun and dog,
and threatens to blow your brains out and
eat you up, if you don't leave Immediately
Then you come down again with celebrity,
and get over the fence as if you were in
earnest Going home in the train all the
ance, as an escaped convict, or iunatic
who has broken from his keepers; and
when you reach your home you plunge
into shirt, cover your hands with court
| plaster, and register a solemn vow never
to go on another picnic. And we are with
you; we never will either-4Nar Adeler.