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.