CHAPTER X.

HOW TO HAVE FUN AT A PICNIC.

If feasible take hammocks and ropes for swings along with you and don’t forget a

“Joggling-Board.”

This is a very popular invention, from South Carolina, and consists of a pine or hemlock plank, one inch thick, one foot wide and ten feet long, which, when supported at each end by solid supports, or ropes from the limb of a tree, forms a seat which responds to every movement of the person sitting in the centre, with a gentle, delightful joggle.

If you use a wagon, stage, or omnibus, to reach the picnic ground, start a game of

Turnpike Loo.

First divide your party into two sides, the lefts and the rights, including the driver. Each side names and counts all animals passed upon their respective sides--a dog, cat, sheep, pig, cow, horse, or domestic fowl, each counts one; a man, woman or child, five; an animal with a bell, fifteen; an animal looking out of a barn or stable window, twenty; and a dog, cat, or baby in a farm-house window counts fifty; the game is two hundred.

The Driver

will endeavor to pass all animals upon his side; but the leader of the left will get out at times and thwart the driver, by chasing and coaxing the creatures to his side. The game is exciting, producing much mirth for the picnickers and amazement among the farmers and live-stock.

A great improvement upon the old-fashioned hamper of heavy dishes is the

Modern Pasteboard Box,

cheap wooden pie-plates, and paper napkins. Wrap your sandwiches in a damp linen napkin and with an outside wrapper of confectioners’ paraffine paper and pack them, and everything else you can, in pasteboard boxes. Salads and similar foods may be carried in wide-mouthed glass jars; mayonnaise dressing, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes in the same manner.

Pack the Ground Coffee,

with an egg rolled in paper, in the coffee-pot. Make the egg into a bundle large enough to fit on top the coffee, with no room to roll or jolt about. The butter or other grease, left after the feast, may be melted and poured into the small paper or wooden boxes; a wick of twisted paper or rag, thoroughly soaked with the grease, will make a lamp. Name the lamps, set them afloat, and the light which goes out last is supposed to be your truest admirer.

The Rhode Island Clam-Bake,

the Pennsylvania Pond-Stew, the Virginia Soup, and the Kentucky Burgoo, are about the jolliest forms of picnics known in this country.

Resting in the laps of the high hills and mountains of Pennsylvania are many small lakes. Here the picnickers spend the forenoon capturing what edible aquatic creatures their skill can procure, all of which are put into the stew-pan along with vegetables, thus making a sort of fresh-water chowder of the most appetizing nature.

Burgoo.

In Virginia and Kentucky it was an old-time custom for the gentlemen to spend the forenoon hunting and fishing, and the slaves in the afternoon cooked the game and fish in great iron pots, hung over blazing wood fires, thus making a most savory dish for the ladies who joined the party toward evening. This is the origin of the Virginia Soup and the Kentucky Burgoo.

The latter is the most famous, and has been enjoyed by all great Kentuckians, from Marshall, Clay, and Lincoln, to the present day.

Since the practical extermination of game, domestic fowls are used as a substitute for wild birds. When you have a Burgoo ask a certain number of guests to each bring a raw dressed chicken, duck, or goose, and others to bring vegetables, peeled and ready for the pot. The head cook, or Burgoo-Master, brings herbs, salt, freshly ground black pepper, salt pork, olives, and lemons.

As a substitute for the old-fashioned, cumbersome iron kettle, take a large, pail-shaped

Clothes-boiler,

bought new for the occasion. Build your fire between two green logs, and use the logs to support the boiler over the flames. Half fill the boiler with water and pour in all the vegetables and meats, and allow them to boil slowly until the bones settle to the bottom and the other ingredients are reduced to a pulp.

It Takes Time to Properly Cook a Burgoo,

and the contents of the pot must be constantly stirred, especially when nearly cooked, in order to prevent the vegetables and meat from burning and imparting a scorched flavor to the soup.

The stirring is done with long-handled paddles, crudely whittled by the men. The young people who take turns in stirring, walk around the steaming caldron to the time of vocal music, and should any maid, by accident or design, click her paddle against one in the hands of a young man, the young man may claim a penalty.

When the Soup is Cooked

it is seasoned to taste, and must be served hot. The olives are extracted from the olive jar, and one olive placed in each cup, with a slice of lemon. The olive liquid remaining in the jar is poured into the hot soup and then the soup is ladled out and poured over the lemon and olive in each cup. If the Burgoo-Master has attended strictly to his work the picnickers will find it one of the most delicious soups which they have ever tasted.

The preparation of the Burgoo does not employ all hands of a large party all the time, and the idle ones may amuse themselves with

A Game of Jack-Fagots.

An armful of fagots is held a foot from the ground and allowed to fall, and then the first player, with a crooked stick, hooks out as many fagots as possible, without disturbing the remainder. The slightest movement of a fagot, not hooked, ends the turn, and, after counting the score, the fagots are bunched and allowed to fall for the next player. The sticks successfully removed by each player constitute the individual scores.

In the afternoon all must join in some games--little folks, old folks, and young folks. Choose some of the games children play, such as

Old Dan Tucker.

By lot, or by old-fashioned counting out verses, let chance decide who is to be “It,” or Tucker, and let all the other males, big and little, select partners as they would for a dance, and form a ring around Tucker. At a signal from “It” each player must face his partner and sing

“Hipperty-Hop, Hipperty-Hop! Joyfully now we sing, As we hop to the right and hop to the left, Around Dan Tucker’s ring!”

Keeping time with the music the players go, with a hipperty-hop step, to the right of the first and to the left of the second, weaving in and out until the partners meet; then right-about-face and back again in the same manner to their places. Next all join hands and

Circle Around Tucker, Singing

“Go round and round old Tucker, Go round and round old Tucker, Go round and round old Tucker, As we have gone before!”

When the couples are again back in their places the song is changed, and suiting the action to

The Words, They Sing

“I put my right hand in, I put my left hand out, I give my right hand a shake, shake, shake, And turn myself about!”

Using the same verse the girls now sing, “I put my pretty face in,” etc. Then their partners sing, “I put my ‘ugly mug’ in,” etc. Then all sing “I put my right foot in,” etc., and after the last shake of the right foot all again join hands and advancing and

Crowding on Tucker

from all sides, and back again to places, they sing

“Go in and out the window, Go in and out the window, Go in and out the window, As we have done before.”

Changing the refrain, they next sing

“Go Stand and Face Your Partner,”

repeating three times, and ending with “as we have done before.” At the last word they face their partners and give them their right hand, their left hand to the next, and, giving hands right and left, sing “Hipperty-Hop Hipperty-Hop,” ending this time with

“Now Let Old Tucker Join Us.”

As soon as Tucker has secured the partner he wants he shouts

“Get out of the way for old Dan Tucker, You’re too late to get your supper,”

and the boy or man left without a partner is “It” for the next game. The tunes for the verses can be obtained from the children. This is all taken from children’s games.

Pitch-peg-pin Pitching

is a great game for hilarious fun. The pegs are sticks, two feet long, sharpened at one end, and nine in number. Put the pointed ends in the ground, forming a diamond, with each peg two feet from its nearest neighbor, and the one at one apex about twenty feet from a taw-line.

Let All the Girls,

big, little, married, and unmarried, form one side, and an equal number of boys, old and young, form the other side. The boys then choose a First Lady, who is to lead their opponents, and the girls choose a First Gentleman, who is to command the men. With three short clubs in her hands the First Lady toes the taw-line and endeavors to knock all the pegs down, in three consecutive throws with the clubs.

The pegs are then reset, the score recorded, and

The First Gentleman Takes

the clubs and his turn. When all have had a turn the individual scores are compared, and the right arm of each man or boy is bound with a pocket-handkerchief to the left arm of the girl, woman or matron whose score most nearly approaches his own, and the First Lady and First Gentleman choose up for sides, taking a couple at each choice. In the order of their score number, the couples now take their turn pitching clubs at the pins, the man, of necessity, using his left hand and the woman her right to throw the clubs, which they do simultaneously.

The Scores

are again compared and the couples bound into fours, and the fours into sixes, until each side is bound into a continuous line, with only the left hand of the end man and the right hand of the end woman to pitch-peg-pin with, and make the final score of the game.

Lawn Hab-enihan.

Mark with a whitewash brush upon the grass, scratch with a stick upon the bare ground or hard sand of a shore, twelve concentric circles. Number the rings from the outside to the centre.

Supply each player with a dozen smooth stones, about the size of the palm of one’s hand. If you can get flat, water-washed stones, with rounded edges, they make the best “Habs.” Standing upon the taw-line at the distance from the target agreed upon, each player in turn pitches a hab at the target, or “Enihan,” leaving a stone inside the circle struck. But if his hab rests upon a line which bounds the rings he loses his turn after the first shot. The player may remove a hab from the circle last struck, or set another hab in it, or, counting from where any one of his habs rests, can move that hab as many circles toward the centre as corresponds with the number of the circle last struck.

If this moves the hab to the centre and leaves some figures over he can place a new hab forward as many rings as correspond with the numbers left over. If any player can cast two habs into a circle occupied by some other player’s hab, the successful player captures the other hab and removes it. The game consists of any specified number of points, and when any one of the players has no habs on the enihan the game is ended. Then each player counts the number of his habs in the centre and the number of captured habs, and whoever has the most adds to his or her individual score the number of habs left on the enihan. The players have three objects constantly in view: to protect his or her habs from capture by getting more than one in the same circle, to work to the centre, and to capture the opponent’s habs. This is an exciting outdoor game, which may be played with the material at hand, and when two players have each a hab in the same circle, and each hab is moving nearer and nearer the centre, the danger of a lucky shot and capture keeps them “guessing.”