Things have not been served in order, they never are at a picnic, and the cunning hostess now produces some claret cup. She has made it herself since they reached the top of the mountain. Two bottles of claret to one of soda water, two lemons, a glass of sherry, a cucumber sliced in to give it the most perfect flavour, plenty of sugar and ice; and where had she hidden that immense pitcher, a regular brown toby, in which she has brewed it?
"I know," said an enfant terrible; "I saw her hiding it under the back seat."
There it is, filled with claret cup, the most refreshing drink for a warm afternoon. Various young persons of opposite sexes, who have been looking at each other more than at the game pie, now prepare to disappear in the neighbouring paths, under a pretence but feebly made of plucking blackberries,—artless dissemblers!
Mamma shouts, "Mary, Caroline, Jane, Tom, Harry, be back before five, for we must start for home." May she get them, even at half-past six. From a group of peasants over a bunch of sticks in the Black Forest, to a queen who delighted to picnic in Fontainebleau, these al fresco entertainments are ever delicious. We cannot put our ears too close to the confessional of Nature. She has always a new secret to tell us, and from the most artificial society to that which is primitive and rustic, they always carry the same charm. It is the Antæus trying to get back to Mother Earth, who strengthens him.
In packing a lunch for a fisherman, or a hunter, the hostess often has to explain that brevity is the soul of wit. She must often compress a few eatables into the side pocket, and the bottle of claret into the fishing-basket. If not, she can palm off on the man one of those tin cases which poor little boys carry to school, which look like books and have suggestive titles, such as "Essays of Bacon," "Crabbe's Tales," or "News from Turkey," on the back. If the fisherman will take one of these his sandwiches will arrive in better order.
The Western hunter takes a few beans and some slices of pork, some say in his hat, when he goes off on the warpath. The modern hunter or fisher, if he drive to the meet or the burn, can be trusted with an orthodox lunch-basket, which should hold cold tea, cold game-pie, a few olives, and a bit of cheese, and a large reserve of sandwiches. When we grow more celestial, when we achieve the physical theory of another life, we may know how to concentrate good eating in a more portable form than that of the sandwich, but we do not know it yet.
Take an egg sandwich,—hard-boiled eggs chopped, and laid between the bread and butter. Can anything be more like the sonnet?—complete in only fourteen lines, and yet perfection! Only indefinite chicken, wheaten flour, the milk of the cow, all that goes to make up our daily food in one little compact rectangle! Egg sandwich! It is immense in its concentration.
Some people like to take salads and apple pies to picnics. There are great moral objections to thus exposing these two delicacies to the rough experiences of a picnic. A salad, however well dressed, is an oily and slippery enjoyment. Like all great joys, it is apt to escape us, especially in a lunch basket. Apple pie, most delicate of pasties, will exude, and you are apt to find the crust on the top of the basket, and the apple in the bottom of the carriage.
If you will take salad, and will not be taught by experience, make a perfect jardinière of all the cold vegetables, green peas, beans, and cauliflower, green peppers, cucumbers, and cold potatoes, and take this mixture dry to the picnic. Have your mayonnaise in a bottle, and dress the salad with it after sitting down, on a very slippery, ferny rock, at the table. Truth compels the historian to observe, that this is delicious with the ham, and you will not mind in the least, until the next day, the large grease-spot on the side breadth of your gown.
As for the apple pie, that is taken at the risk of the owner. It had better be left at home for tea.