Then the gentlemen! Under what circumstances are they ever so
chivalric as during a pouring rain, when, wet to the skin, they assist
the faintly-shrieking beauties over the mud puddles, and hold umbrellas
tenderly above chignons and uncrimping crimps! To be sure they do not
often act as Sir WALTER RALEIGH did, but then they do not wear velvet
cloaks, and what would be the wit of throwing a piece of broadcloth or
white linen into the mud?
We have champagne picnics, lemonade and cold water picnics, and some,
which, although they cannot be classed under the head of hot water,
still manage, before they are through, to get all the participants into
it. We have widows' and widowers' picnics, a kind of reunion for the
encouragement of mutual consolation, where, meandering through green
fields and under nodding boughs, they can talk or muse upon the virtues
of the "dear departed," and the probable merits of the "coming man," or
woman.
Then the anti-matrimonials have theirs, too, always exceedingly select,
where the men look frightened, and the women indignant, and which
partakes somewhat of the character of a Methodist prayer-meeting, the
gentlemen all clinging to each other as if for protection, evidently in
bodily fear of another Sabine expedition, with the order of the
programme, however, a little reversed in regard to the two sexes.
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