Picnicking considered as a Mistake.
Why do people attend public picnics? We do
not wish to be iterative, but why do they? Heaven
help them! it is because they know no better, and
no one has had the leisure to enlighten them.
Now your picnic-goer is a muff—an egregious,
gregarious muff, and a glutton. Moreover, a
nobody who, if he be male wears, in nine cases in
ten, a red necktie and a linen duster to his heel;
if she be female hath soiled hose to her calf, and
in her face a premonition of colic to come.
We hold it morally impossible to attend a picnic
and come home pure in heart and undefiled of cuticle.
For the dust will get in your nose, clog your ears,
make clay in your mouth and mortar in your eyes,
and so stop up all the natural passages to the
soul; whereby the wickedness which that subtle
organ doth constantly excrete is balked of its issue,
tainting the entire system with a grievous taint.
At picnics, moreover, is engendered an unpleasant
perspiration, which the patient must perforce endure
until he shall bathe him in a bath. It is not
sweet to reek, and your picnicker must reek.
Should he chance to break a leg, or she a limb, the
inevitable exposure of the pedal condition is alarming
and eke humiliating.
