AFTER THE PICNIC
"AND what comes next on the programme?" asked the Chief.
"Coma, I should say," replied Colonel Ferrers. "After that watermelon, I
see nothing else for it. It's my avowed belief that my nephew there
could not stir if his life depended on it; it stands to reason. The boy
has eaten more than his own weight. Monstrous!"
"What a frightful calumny!" cried Jack, laughing. "Really, Uncle Tom,
you cannot expect me to sit still under that."
He rose lightly to his feet, and grasping a branch of the tree above his
head, drew himself up, and after kicking his long legs several times in
the air, finally twisted them round the branch, and in another moment
had disappeared in the shadowy depths of the great hemlock.
"Oh! I say!" his voice floated down. "This is a great tree to climb.
You'd better come up, Uncle Tom, if you feel the slightest symptoms of
coma."
The other lads did not wait to be invited, but flung themselves at the
tree, and were soon lost to sight, though not to sound. Colonel Ferrers
turned to his hostess with a frown which tried hard not to turn into a
smile.
"Now, did you ever hear of such impudence as that?" he asked. "These
young fellows of to-day are the most impudent scoundrels I ever came
across. Time was, though, when we could have climbed a tree with the
best of them; eh, Merryweather?"
"I have no doubt you could now, Colonel," said his host, "if you were
put to it; but I confess it is more comfortable under a tree than in
it, nowadays, especially after a Gargantuan feast like this."
It had indeed been a great picnic. The boys, while on a tramp, had
discovered a grove of pines and hemlocks, huge old trees, which had
unaccountably escaped the woodman's axe. The pines shot up straight and
tall for a hundred feet and more, their trunks seamed and scarred, their
clouds of dusky green plumes tossing far overhead; the hemlocks were no
less massive in girth, but they were twisted into all manner of
grotesque shapes, and their feathery branches hung low, making a dense
canopy over the heads of the picnickers. Here, under one of these
hemlocks, the cloth had been laid, and decorated with ferns and hemlock
tassels. Then the baskets were unpacked, and the campers feasted as only
dwellers in the open air can feast. Ham and pasty, sandwiches and rolls,
jam and doughnuts--nothing seemed to come amiss; and they finished off
with a watermelon of such mighty proportions that it took all the
united energies of the boys to dispose of it.
But it was finally disposed of, and now came the hour that is apt to be
a little difficult at picnics; the hour between the feast and the going
home.
"I have a new game," said Mrs. Merryweather. "Perhaps you would like to
try it presently; but first, Colonel Ferrers, while the boys are
skylarking, or rather tree-larking, up there, I want to hear the story
you were telling Miles on the drive over. I could not hear very well on
the back seat, and besides, I was making up my game. It was some
adventure of yours when you were a boy."
"Capital story!" said Mr. Merryweather. "Do tell it, Colonel; I want to
hear it again."
The Colonel smiled, and puffed meditatively at his cigar.
"Story of the barrel, eh?" he said. "Upon my word, now, I think it is
pretty hard to make me tell that story before all these young people.
What do you say, Gertrude? you don't want to hear about your old
friend's being a young fool, do you?"
"Oh! Colonel Ferrers," said Gertrude; "a story that makes your eyes
twinkle so must be one that we all want to hear. Do begin, please!"
And all the girls, who had been putting away the table-cloth and
"tidying-up" generally, gathered about the Colonel in an eager group.
"Well! well!" he said, glancing from one bright face to another. "After
all, what are we old fogies for, but to point a moral and adorn a tale?
Listen, then. This happened when I was a young jackanapes of about my
nephew's age; I knew everything in the world then, you understand, and
nobody else knew much of anything. That was my belief, as it is the
belief of most young men."
"Uncle," said a voice from above, "there are three young men up here who
are prepared to drop things on your head if you slander their
generation."
"Slander your generation, sir?" cried the Colonel, "by likening it to my
own? Of all the monstrous insolence I ever heard--you may be thankful,
sir, that I name yours in the same breath with it. Be good enough to
hold your tongue, sir, and attend to your business, which is that of
listening to me. Well, my dear madam, at the period of which I speak, I
was in the office of my uncle, Marmaduke Ferrers, India merchant,
importer of tea, silks, that sort of thing. Learning the trade, you
understand; though, as I say, I was not aware that there was anything in
particular to learn. This is one of the lessons I did learn. One day I
was sent to the warehouse to count some barrels, and see them stowed
away in the vault where they belonged. They were a special thing,
barrels of minerals for some collection museum, I forget what. Out of
our own line, but we had undertaken to store and keep them for a time.
The vault was directly under the warehouse, which was some way from the
office. So! I went down and found no one there; The men were at their
dinner, you understand. They may have been a little in a hurry, may have
started a few minutes before the bell rang; I don't know how it was. At
any rate, I was in a towering passion; thought the whole business was
going to the dogs for want of discipline, wanted to dismiss every man in
the warehouse. Men who had been there before I was born, and knew more
about tea than I was likely to know in my lifetime. Well, sir, it came
into my ass's head that I would give these men a lesson, show them that
there was some one in the place that meant to have things done when he
wanted them done. I would stow those barrels myself. I was strong as a
bull, you remember--I beg ten thousand pardons! you and your husband
were infants when this happened; not out of long clothes, I am positive.
But I was uncommonly strong, and thought Milo and Hercules would have
found me a tough subject to tackle. Well--speaking of tackle--there was
the rope and pulley, all ready for lowering; block up at the ceiling,
rope dangling,--just over the trap that led into the vault. There were
the barrels; nothing was easier, I thought. Child's play; I would have
every one of the barrels lowered and stowed before those scoundrels came
back from their dinner. I pushed the first barrel to the edge of the
trap (lifted the trap-door first, you understand), hooked on the 'fall,'
pleased as Punch with myself--the only man in the world, I give you my
word; then I got a good hold on the rope, and--kicked the barrel over
the edge."
"Oh! Colonel Ferrers!" cried the girls.
"Ha! ha! ha!" roared the boys in the tree.
"Loaded with minerals, you understand! stone, metal, I don't know what.
The barrel went down, and I went up."
"_Oh!_ Colonel Ferrers!"
"Up to the ceiling, I give you my word. High room, too, great warehouse,
twenty feet if it was one. There I hung, and there I swung, a spectacle
for gods and men."
"What _did_ you do?" asked Mrs. Merryweather, as soon as she could
control her laughter. "Dear friend, it is most heartless to laugh, but
how can we help it? How did you ever get down? did you have to wait till
the men came back?"
"No, madam. My pride would not allow that. I learned my lesson, or a
part of it, while I hung there like Mahomet's coffin; I learned that
Gravitation did not trouble itself about superior young men; but I did
not learn all that there was to learn; that took the sequel. Well, I
hung there, as I say, revolving slowly; centrifugal force, you
understand; I was really exemplifying the workings of natural forces;
interesting demonstration, if there had been any one there to see. My
crumb of comfort was that there was no one. I must get down before those
men came back from dinner; that was the one thing necessary in the world
at that moment. I measured the space of the trap as I swung; I prided
myself on my correct eye; you see I was a most complete ass: I have seen
only a few completer. I thought I could jump down astride of the trap,
so to speak, and get no harm. I came down the rope, hand over fist, till
I got to the end of it; only about six feet between me and safety: then
I jumped."
"And did you--"
"No, my dear madam, I did not. I went down into the cellar, on top of
the barrel, and I carry the mark of the edge of that barrel on my
shoulders to this day, and shall to my latest day. And the moral of this
story," the Colonel concluded, glancing up into the depths of the great
hemlock, "the moral, my young friends, is: wait till you know something
before you decide that you know everything."
When the laughter had subsided, Mr. Merryweather said: "Your story,
Colonel, reminds me of a scrape that Roger and I once got into, years
ago. No, it wasn't Roger, it was my brother Will. My children all know
it, but it may be new to you and our other guests. It happened when we
were out sailing one day, on this very pond. The water was pretty low
that year, and we got over into a cove on the north side, where we
seldom went, and didn't know the ground thoroughly. Indeed, in very low
water, one is apt to find that one doesn't know any ground thoroughly.
New ledges and rocks are constantly cropping out--as you shall hear.
Well, we were sailing along in fine style, before a fair wind, when
suddenly--we ran aground."
"On the shore?" asked the Colonel.
"No; on a rock. It was getting dark, and we could not see very well, but
I could see a nose of rock, and it looked like the end of a ledge. 'I'll
get out and shove her off!' said I. I sounded with an oar, and found the
water barely ankle-deep on the ledge. So I took off my shoes and
stockings, rolled up my trousers a little, and stepped in--up to my
neck!"
"Ha! ha!" roared the Colonel. "Ho! ho! that was sport. I wish I had seen
you."
"Wait a moment!" said the Chief. "The picture is not ready for
exhibition yet. When Will had got through laughing at me, he went to
work--I found I could not stir the boat alone--he went to work and got
ready. Stripped to the skin--he had on a new suit, and was something of
a dandy in those days--stepped carefully overboard--and landed in water
three inches deep."
"Merryweather, you are making this up!"
"Indeed I am not, my dear sir. There we stood, I up to my chin, he with
his toes under water, and laughed till we were so weak that we had to go
ashore and sit down before we had strength to push that boat off. There
is my Roland for your Oliver, Colonel. And now, Miranda, I think we are
ready for your game. Come down, boys!"
The boys came scrambling down, still laughing over the stories, and soon
all were seated on the carpet of dry, fragrant pine-needles. The girls
had found some oak-leaves ("It is my belief," said Mr. Merryweather,
"that if Bell went to a picnic in a coal-mine or on a sand-bank, she
would still manage to find oak-leaves somewhere!"), and were busily
twining garlands for the heads of the company.
"Are we all ready?" asked Mrs. Merryweather. "Well! my game--a very
simple one--is called _Vocabulary_. It came from my reading the other
day an admirable little book written by a wise professor, in which he
deplores the poverty of our vocabularies, and makes a suggestion for our
enlarging them. He advises us to add two or three words to our list
every week. The first time we use a new word, he says, it will be
embarrassing to us and, it may be, amusing to our hearers; but if we
have courage and patience, we shall be doing a good work not only for
ourselves, but for all our generation and the generations that are to
come. Well, this naturally appealed to me, and I was thinking of
proposing it to you all this evening; and then, as we were driving over,
it occurred to me that it might be made into a rather amusing game."
"Miranda," said her husband, "is there anything in life that you do
_not_ think can be made into a rather amusing game? But go on!"
"Dear Mammy!" said Phil. "Do you remember when you and I both had the
toothache, and you thought it might be amusing to count the jumps and
see how many there were in a minute?"
"Well, so it would have been," said his mother, "if we had only had a
little more fortitude. Now if you are all going to laugh at me, you
shall not learn the game."
"Oh, we will be good!" exclaimed the Merryweathers. "We truly will."
"The game of _Vocabulary_," said Mrs. Merryweather, "is played thus.
One--I, for example--begins to tell a story. I say, 'I went out to walk
this morning, and I met--' there I stop short, and you, in turn, give a
verb synonymous, more or less, with 'met.' This goes around the circle
till some one cannot find a verb, and that some one must continue the
story, stopping at any word he likes. I fear this is not very clear;
perhaps we can illustrate it best playing it. I will begin as I
suggested. I went out to walk this morning, and on my way I met--" she
stopped.
"Encountered!" said Mr. Merryweather.
"Approached!" said the Colonel.
"Ran up against!" said Gerald.
"Fell afoul of!" said Phil.
"Fell in with!" said Bell.
"Peggy, you come next."
"Oh! I can't!" cried poor Peggy. "They have said everything; Mrs.
Merryweather, I can't _ever_ play anything of this kind, you know. I am
too stupid."
"Nonsense, my child; you are not in the least stupid. If you cannot
think of a word, go on with the story."
"But I don't know how!" cried Peggy, her eyes growing large and round,
with a look that Gertrude and Margaret knew only too well. The tears
were not far behind those round blue eyes; and Margaret hastened to the
rescue. "You met a man, dear!" she whispered. "That is all you need
say."
"Well--I met a man!" said Peggy, with a gasp.
"Person!"
"Individual!"
"Anthropoid ape!"
"Masculine mortal!"
"Chump!"
"I object to the definition!" said Mrs. Merryweather. "In case of a
false definition, the falsifier takes up the thread. Go on, Jerry."
"This man (he _was_ a chump, you'll see!) was so ugly that not a crow
dared to stay in the same county with him, and so disagreeable that it
gave one spasms to look at him; also, he had not the manners to take off
his hat--" he stopped short.
"Cap!"
"Hood!"
"Helmet!"
"Bonnet!"
"Head-dress!"
"Tam-o'-shanter!"
"Mitre!"
"Tiara!"
"Fez!"
"Turban!"
"Beretta!"
"I give in!" cried the Colonel. "I cannot think of another thing, so I
continue the tale.
"This odious person, after passing me in the unmannerly fashion
described, was about to proceed further; but I, seizing him by the coat
collar, lifted my stout stick, and gave him a good sound--"
"Thrashing!"
"Licking!"
"Beating!"
"Chastisement!"
"Hiding!"
"Walloping!"
"Whipping!"
"Scourging!"
"Drubbing!"
"Trouncing!"
"Thwacking!"
"Lashing!"
"Flogging!"
"Caning!"
"Larruping!"
"Fustigating!"
"Basting!"
"Leathering!"
"Thumping!"
"Whopping!"
"Rib-roasting!"
"Dear me!" cried Mrs. Merryweather. "This is rather terrible, I think.
There seem to be more terms to express personal violence than anything
else."
"We haven't begun to give them all, either!" said Phil. "If we are
allowed to use modern slang--I know you prefer ancient, Mammy--"
"I know you are a saucy boy!" said his mother.
"My dear friends," said the Chief, rising. "This is all very fine: but
the simple fact is, it is beginning to rain, and I think it advisable
for us to beat, fustigate, (where _did_ you get that, Miranda?) or
wallop, a retreat!"
Then there was scrambling up, and running to and fro, and gathering up
of baskets and shawls. The good old horse, which had been grazing
peacefully in a clearing hard by, was harnessed, and Mr. and Mrs.
Merryweather, Colonel Ferrers, and the _impedimenta_ bundled in and off
as hastily as might be. Finally, as the rain began to pour down in good
earnest, the younger campers gathered into a solid phalanx and walked
home across the fields, singing in chorus, and informing all whom it
might concern that they were
"Marching along,
Fifty score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!"