Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1902-07-08
QUILTS YARN.
The Small Boy Goes on Annu-
al Church Picnic.
Some Of His Experiences on This I'm
Portant Occasion.
The Return for Playing Good and At
tending Sunday School.

This is the season of the year when
church picnics are ripe and the good
little boy who has sat on a hard board
or horse hair cushion through the
long dry Sunday-school lessons,
chased flies and learned all about
Jonah and the whale while the bad
boys have played barn door tick and
other games of chance on the Sabbath
Gay, gets his reward by getting his
seat in a hay cart one of these spring.
less Wooden-aXle vehicles, relics of
grandpas days, that have been handed
down from generation to genera ton
until springs are considered super
fluities and make the ordinary farmer
giddy to ride on them.
The picnic is usually held way out in
the dense woods, beside some babbling
brook or placid lake where the black
flies and mosquitoes congregate and hold
field day services "a hours out of the
day. They always welcome a picnic
party with the glad hand especially if
there are any small children in the
bunch for these are tender and good
eating.
The starting hour is usually about
A. NJ so the good boy has to set his
Ialarm clock for o'clock so as to be sure
to have plenty of time. Then the clock
gets a little funny and goes off at two
and again at four. OF course every
body knows that two and four are six
but the boy would little rather the
clock would go off all at once with no
recess between. But he begins to
realize that he can't have everything
that he wants in this world even at a
church picnic so he takes what comes.
BY the time he gets his frugal repast
down. a hay transport with an overload
of bowling children is at the door and
he embarks for quiet day at the lake.
After jolting over ten or twelve miles
| of hard road. the hardest any land
surveyor ever laid out, he reaches his
destination and the fun commences.
Ring around the rosy around the
green carpet here we stand and all
those choice games are played until he
begins to get q trihe weary.
Then comes the grand spread with
red lemonade. the real circus wagon
color not strong enough to go alone but
Just convalescent. The long table is
spread in the shady part of the grove
and all the good things are piled noun
| tain high upon it-dOuble jolnted
doughnuts with extra holes in them,
cake galore and pies of all descriptions,
Including the roofiess lemon variety
| that somebody mistook for an air
cushion on the way out. Of course the
ants eat first They always do and
what there is left goes to the children,
tire butter gets n little restless under
the warmer rays of the sun and crawls
out over the side of the plate but that
is soon remedied and the oleomargar1ne
| is reprimanded and runs back into the
dish again. Some little excitement is
caused during the meal by the breaking
of the bench near the center of the
| table, which mikes several children,
| few pies and some custards together
but no harm is done and the banquet
continues.
| After the feast comes more games
and swings and n speech or two. The
day is now getting we'll into the after
noon when the expected shower comes
/ I'D. Nobody ever heard of a church
picnic where the girls all dress in white
| without a ShoWer-not enough water to
wash them off the earth but just
enough to soak them so that their
clothes adhere TO the skin like court
plaster suit. but then they don't think
of their own discomfort but just think
how much good that gentle fall of rain
is going to do for the honest Granger
land how much cheaper everything is
going to be when the beef trust goes
ont of business. And thus the good lit
| tie how moraliZes as he stands on that
evergreen shore and wrings the water
out of his white pique suit.
| After the shower comes the mosque