The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-09-20
OUR SAVAGE ANCESTORS,

One Thing Inherited from Them Is Taste
for Picnics.
Perhaps there are few more exact in.
stances Of what is called atavism than
the disposition of the whole civilized
world in summer time toward the pic
mic. 1t is not by any means the need
of association, of eating hardboiled
eggs and dry sandwiches and drinking
warm lemonade in company, or o!
sharing even daintier satisfactions to
the appetite. 1t is not the need of get
ting shoes full Of sand, of coming homo
with draggled skirts and limp linen
and aching backs and burned faces, to
say nothing of insipient infiuenzas and
irheumatisms. 1t is purely and simply
the need of being in the open air, and
of deceiving ones self into the glad
idea that one is rarely living there, OF
having the freedom of earth and sky
and water and wind and all outdoors,
as the first savage ancestors did. For
it Is not so many generations since tho
cabins and caves were mere sleeping
places, and the life of people was lived
out doors, and not so many more since
the dens of the forest gave all the
shelter there was So it is not at
all impossible that, beyond the
love of what is pleasant, this
craving for outdoor life is merely
hereditary tendency, a survival of the
ancestral quality that prob badly had the
animal instinct for home, and loved its
environments as in the main we love
our own, and if it did not love it knew
of no other and SO accepted it as a
natural affair. Perhaps this is still
more probable because on the picnic,
more than elsewhere, we are apt to re-
turn in our manners in some measure
to the savagery of our earlier people.
We sit upon the ground there, we lie
upon it; there is nothing else to sit on;
we do not scruple to eat pie with our
fingers; water au naturel in the abb
sence of ice is not undrinkable; a clam
she'll in cleft stick makes US salts.
factory spoon; crawling and creeping
things about us are matters of no con-
Germ; sometimes we even dispense
with a chaperon; we do not always
pause to regret that we have not the
woOdcraft of these early people that
taught them how to get the most COM
fort out of the least material. OF
course there are picnics where ice is
taken along, and pate de foie, and
aspic jelly, and champagne, where
there are buffers and walters follow
ing, and all is made as conspicuously
like the life of the picniclSers when at
home as possible; but these only prove
still more strongly the inherent love
of outdoors, as the Vatican party,
painted on a fan, demonstrates its
value when it showed people with
every luxury of life in palaces finding
the picnic attractive enough for a chief
pleasure.
To most people the pleasantest room
in the world is not so pleasant as an
open piazza; and to the healthy the
widest and loveliest vine-hung piazza
Is not as enchanting as the wood. the
seashore, the mountain, or even the
high field or the lakeside. The love Of
liberty seems TO be fed and grati6ed in
the sense of the surrounding height
ard space, whether consciously or 9th.
erwise. The love OF beauty. too, finds !
It's uedlcSs SSllSldc.lOu II the OultK
world.
+. Thou canst not wave thy stat in air.
Or dip thy paddle in the lake.
But Il caryes the bow OF beauty there.
And the r!ppies IN rhymes the oar forsakaL
Moreover, it is not impossible that, |
without being aware OF IL, we are at. |
tracted to this sem alliance of wild life |
by the blind instinct OF returning TO
the dear old mother earth. or laying
our head on her warm breast. and OF
receiving her unspoken sympathy in
our joys, her silent consolation in our
trouble And although we do not go
camping and picnicking with any ulti. (
mate view to philosophy and the study /
of the science of the unknown. yet q !
thousand questions that find no an
swer in the house answer themselves
outdoors
Cprose the merry sphinx
And c-ouched no more = Stone,
She melted into purple cloud
She silvered IN the moon.
She spired into yellow fine.
She Powered in Blossoms red
She flowed into : fozrln- wave.
She stood Eoaa6noc-s head