The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-07-13

Matilda ut the Picnic.
1t is the hour of picnics Every other fence
is full of advertisements of moonlight excur-
sions and cheap trips. Superb inducements
are offered to those who wish to buy pleasure
wholesale and make q corner in sylvan sensu-
BUSINESS. There was time when the 1st
Of May was synonymous with a juvenile
holiday among the trees and flowers, but we
are afraid that time is not, as Macaulay
would say, "within the memory of men still
living" Then the schoolgirl arrayed her.
self in spotless muslin, and materfamilias
attended with one eye on her daughter and the
other on the hamper. There was a healthy
and innocent family feeling in those ancient
picnics. They were events to be anticipated
for year to come, and to be affectionately
reverted to a year after they were over.
Possibly clergyman attended and opened
the exercises with prayer not too long.
They were occasions made for children, and
children gave character to them. If any of
the attending teachers could be accused Of
Irritation, the Irritation was of q sober and
restrained description. The fact was recog-
nized that childhood is peculiarly the season
for that free, artless, animal enjoyment
which the picnic, under proper conditions, is
calculated to promote. With the lapse of
few lustres we have arrived at another stand
ard, and are not SO pure. Doubtless there are
such things as eminently proper picnics-
picnics where no man gets drunk and no
woman gets insulted but these are getting
fewer every year. The facility with which the
picnic is converted into an excuse for rufdan-
ism in one sex, and frailty, to call it by no
harsher name, in the other is uncompli-
mentary to human kind. One would imagine
from the green thraldom of the Spring,
would WOO even the dspnved heart and
blunted mind to thoughts of purity and
peace. But the contrary seems to be the
case. The lonely dell where innocent fiat
teries might be paid which it would do the
vioets no harm to listen to is converted into
the bower Of an orgy, and the grotto where
love might be spoken, and no harm done,
becomes the lair of sensuality and lust. AL
most every other gentle landscape which
the genius of the modern picnic touches is
desecrated by the contact. The indignant
foliage rustles with the shame that has been
wrought there, and could the modest leaves
tell all they have looked down upon we should
have poetical police report delivered in
nolian cadences All the splendid livery of
nature is spattered with the moral mud the
modern picnic has thrown upon it. It is not
to be wondered at, then, that Matilda's mistress
objects to her going to festivals of this order.
We are not ashamed to confess that, to a GER
tain extent, our sympathies are with Matilda
Doomed by an inscrutable Providence to
culinary existence, with little but a surrep-
titious male cousin to brighten her pathway
between the coal cellar and the stationary tubs,
her fate is far from enviable. Let us endea-
vor to find out what her virtues are "a work
in which it must be acknowledged she gives
us very little assistance), and to credit her
with them accordingly. If she breaks off
handles and purloins the silver, and leaves
without warming and FORCES ideal ''recom-
mends," these are the venalities incident to
her temptations and her temperament. But
until she reforms in these and other particu-
haps il is Just as well for her to stay away
from the picnic SO polish the silver, Matilda,
and do the meat to n turn, and let us hope
that the bcniiicent law OF compensation will
make IL all right with you some time or other
here or hereafter. But picnics are not for
you. Neither do we know that, as they are at
present too often conducted, they are exactly
the thing for your betters Oh, if we could
only have the picnic pure and simple, as Adam
and Eve might have held it ere Eve picked the
apple 20 make Adam a turnover We want no
green groves demoralized; noglowworm's glen
Of chastity made infamous. Childhood and
wild wood are moral as well as literal rhymes
the one is the patrimony Of the other, and we
pollute this fair inheritance every time we
sanction a party Of brawlers among it under
the name Of a picnic. Possibly there were
errors in the old-fashioned festival, but there
are crimes in the new-fashioned one. For
every accident then We have q vice now for
every casualty an outrage The modern pic
mic Is in numerous excuses only an
excuse for licentious brutality on the
part of one sex and semi-inebri-
atod collision on the part of the other.
More than half conscious of the passionate
d6nouement to which the flushed transition
stages that she yields TO will lead, the ruined
girl may almost be said to connive with her
tempter. Parents, guardians, masters, mis-
tresses could, if they behaved with bravery
and tact, do a great deal toward reducing the
evil, and perhaps will make the effort after
having suffered n little longer from their