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Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 by Various
page 59 of 79 (74%)
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. 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.
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