Year: 1873

THIS is the season of the year when
picnics are most frequent. For real solid
enjoyment we, for our part, must prefer
well conducted funeral to an ordinary
picnic. You generally reach the grounds
| about II O'Clock, and the exercises begin
with climbing hill, up which you are
compelled to carry two heavy lunch-bas-
kets. When you reach the summit you
are positively certain that the thermometer
must be nearly $50 in the shade You
throw yourself on the grass, and in few
moments brigade of black ants begin to
crawl down the back of your neck, while
a phalanx of ticks charge up your trouser
leg. And just as you jump up, your old
est boy, who has been out in the woods,
where he stirred up yellow jackets nest,
comes in with his head and face swelled
to the size of water-bucket, conveying
the information that your other boy,
William Henry, is up a tree and can't get
down. After laboring to release William
Henry the thermometer seems to have
gone up 200 more degrees, and you think
you will take swim in the creek. While
you are in the water, young Jones strclls
out with Miss Smith, and unconscious of
your presence they sit down close to your
clothes, and engage in conversation for





down in the shallow stream, afraid to
bulge and nearly killed with the hot sun.
When they leave, you emerge and find
that some wicked boy from the neighbor-
ing village has run off with your shirt and
socks. You fix up as well as you can, and
when you get back with the party they
are eating dinner from cloth laid on the
ground. A spider is spinning a cobweb
from the pickle,jar to the little end of the
cold ham; straddlebugs are frolicking
around over the pound-cake, cater
pillars are exploring the bread-plate,
grasshoppers are jumping into the butter
where they stick fast, the bees are so thick
around the sugar-bow that you are afraid
to go near it, and there are enough ants in
the pie to walk completely off with it.
You take seat however, determined to
try to eat something, but you get up sud-
denly-all at once, as it were, foryou have
set down on brier. Then William Hen
ry, who has quaffed an unreasonable guam
tity of lemonade, gets the collie, and his
mother goes intS Mysteries because she
thinks he is poisoned with pokeberries.
You lay him under an umbrella, and pro-
ceed to climb tree in order to fix swing
for the girls. After skinning your hands,
tearing your trousers and running your
coat, you get to the top, tie the rope and
undertake to come down on it. You do
come down, with velocity, and your
fingers are rubbed entirely raw Just then
it begins to rain furiously, and the whole
party stampedes to the depot for shelter
When the shower slackens you go back
to the ground to get the rope, and just as
you get up in the tree the owner of the
place comes along with gun and dog,
and threatens to blow your brains out and
eat you up, if you don't leave Immediately.
Then you come down again with celerity,
and get over the fence as if you were in
earnest. Going home in the train all the
passengers regard you, from your appear
who has broken from his keepers; and
when you reach your home you plunge
into shirt, cover your hands with court
plaster, and register solemn vow never
to go on another picnic. And we are with
you; we never will either.--MaD AdeIer,