Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1903-08-08
PICNIC DAYS. x sse 'ss r ,,:

The day Of the summer evening
picnic is again at hand and almost
daily young and old may be seen
seeking the sylvan dells and other
chigre naunts to accumulate
stocking full of itches and bunch
of mosquito bites behind their ears.
The stocking full of itches may not
be behind their ears but the mos
quito bites will be. IT'S now the
summer girl in duck skirt and natty
shirt waist a sunny smile on the
front of her head and straw sailor
on the top and daintily slippered
feet attached to her ankles APP
peareth on the scene and, causeth
the young mans heart to swell
and his pocketbook to shrink while
the liveryman wears cheerful
smile and all the world is bright
and glad and full of ecstatic thrills
and things. How delightful to
drive through the country between
sweetscented fields on a bright
summer day, with one foot in a
basket of lunch and the other
calmly reposing in the lemonade
bucket, while the idol of your keart
sits beside you looking too sweet to
live q minute and requesting you to
stop every forty rods and catch her
a chipmunk Or pick about nine
acres Of wild roses with fourteen
hundred briars to the STEM Oh
there's nothing like it except an
other one next day.
i What can compare to supper in
the woods where you lounge on the
ground and dodge scraps from the
other end of the table while the
sweet summer girl tramples on
your feet as she passes you the
cherry pie-which always ''squshes"
out at the sides and runs through
your fingers when you bite it and
spills lemonade down your collar
as she begs pardon for hurting your
cornsl How exciting to watch
your next neighbor at the table
chase the guileless ant through the
intricacies Of his gooseberry pie
and with toothpick spear the too
familiar cockroach which has taken
refuge in the jelly. How pleasing
it is to bite into tart and watch
the crisp fragments fly into your
neighbor's lap while the jelly makes
a toboggan slide Of your shirt front
and nestles down inside your vest and
you choke on the crumbs and leave
the table in confusion while the
girl with the plaid hose and the
prolific appetite gets in her work
on the sailed peanuts and other
things for which you have an
especially yearnsome yearn. Then
too what can equal the joy Of feel
ing a famished woodtick fasten his
fangs in your vertebrae or festive
flea skip about and sample your
anatomy when you don't dare go
after him. How gallant fellow
feels when he helps charming
creature of tender years and
feminine gender into a hammock
assuring her it is perfectly safe
and later finds himself and the girl
upside down on the greensward
with busted suspender and a
worried look all on account of a
rotten rope.
One of the main requisites of a
successful summer evening picnic
is an elegant sufficiency of assorted
grub. Young ladies should never
commit the error that five of my
old maid friends were guilty of
some years ago. They decided to
spend a day at the river twelve
miles distant and wanted a mild
hammered harmless youth to drive
for them. I put on one of my in
nocent unsophisticated looks and
got the job and we started out.
When it came time to eat they
fished up five lovely chocolate cakes.
Old maids always eat chocolate
cake and each one thought she was
to furnish the cake and the other
four were to do the rest. Of course
there were a few other things but
the principal thing was cake. We
all ate cake and fed it to the horses
and painted the landscape with it
and had some left. The atmosphere
for miles around took on a beauti-
full seal brown odor and my dreams
had chocolate filing in them for
months. The ladies apologized of
course but got revenge neverthe-
less. I persuaded them they ought
to go across the ford and convinced
them I could wade in and make the
loveliest kind of stepping stones out
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