The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-08-28
PHILOSOPHY OF THE PICNIC,
It is a Pure Case of Atavism. From Harper's Bazar.l

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 pie
 nic. It is not by any means the need
 of association, of eating hard-boiled
 eggs and dry sandwiches and drinking lemonade in company, or of sharing even daintier satisfactions to the appe- tite. It is not the need of getting shoes full of sand, of coming home with draggled skirts and limp linen and aching backs and burned faces, to say nothing of incipient inf1uenzas and rheumatisms. It is purely and simply the need of being in the open air, and of deeeiving one's self into the glad idea that one is really 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 the 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 shell ter there was. So 1t is not at all impos- sible that, beyond the love of what is pleasant, this craving for outdoor life is merely a hereditary tendency, sur viva1 of the ancestral quality that probably had the animal instinct for
 home, and loved it's environments as in the main we love our own, and if 1t did not love it knew of no other and so accepted it as a natural affair. Per- haps this is still more probable because on the picnic, more than elsewhere, we are apt to return 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 scrupIe to eat pie with our fingers; water au naturel in the absence of ice is not undrinka- ble; clamsheIl in a cleft stick makes
 us a satisfactory spoon; crawling and creeping things about us are matters of no concern; sometimes we even dis, pense with chaperon; we do not al- ways pause to regret that we have not the woodcraft of those early people | lIldL taught llOW UO Scl LHG IlOSl comfort 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 following, and all | is made as conspicuously like the life of the picnickers when at home as pos sible; but@these only prove still more strongly the inherent love of outdoors, l as the Vatican party, painted on a fan, | demonstrates its value when it showed people with every luxury of life in pal aces 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 l widest and loveIiest 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 gratified | in the sense of the surrounding night l and space, whether consciously or oth-
 erwise. The love of beauty, too, finds it's nearest satisfaction in the outer world:
 | Thou canSt not wave thy stair in air,
 Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
 But it carves the bow of beauty there,
 And the nipples in rhymes the oar
 forsake.
 Moreover, it is not impossible that,
 without being aware of it, we are at 1 tracted to this semblance of wild life
 by the blind instinct of returning to the
 dear old mother earth, of laying our
 head on her warm breast, and of re-
 ceiving her unspoken sympathy in our joys, her silent consolation in our trou-
 ble. And although we do not go camp