Therefore a picnic may be
considered as a great moral agency in promoting domestic happiness; for
what is so likely to touch the heart and arouse the slumbering
sensibility of a husband and father, as a roast of beef done to a charm,
or an _omelette soufflee_ presenting just that sublime tint of
yellowness which can only be attained by means of the most delicate
refinement and discrimination? No other attention, however flattering,
is so soon recognised, or gratefully appreciated.
After one of these innocent festivals has been fully decided upon, then
we always select a day when gathering clouds predict, most
unmistakeably, a coming storm, because, what would a picnic be without
some excitement of this kind? A pudding minus the sauce, a sandwich
without the mustard, a joke without the point. What pleasure _could_
there be in a dry picnic? Ladies never appear to such excellent
advantage, never are so utterly bewitching, as when, with light summer
dresses bedraggled and dirty, they cling helplessly to their protectors,
or run in frantic haste to some place of shelter--for it is only when a
woman (or a gentle bovine) runs, that the poetry of motion is fully
realized.
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