Chapter 18

PICNICS

The code of table etiquette in the days of my boyhood, as I now recall it, was expressed something like: "Eat what is set before you and ask no questions." We heeded this injunction with religious fidelity, but yearned to ask why they didn't set more before us. About the only time that a real boy gets enough to eat is when he goes to a picnic and, even there and then, the rounding out of the programme is connected with clandestine visits to the baskets after the formal ceremonies have been concluded. At a picnic there is no such expression as "from soup to nuts," for there is no soup, and perhaps no nuts, but there is everything else in tantalizing abundance. If I find a plate of deviled eggs near me, I begin with deviled eggs; or, if the cold tongue is nearer, I begin with that. In this way I reveal, for the pleasure of the hostesses, my unrestricted and democratic appetite. Or, in order to obviate any possible embarrassment during the progress of the chicken toward me, I may take a piece of pie or a slice of cake, thinking that they may not return once they have been put in circulation. Certainly I take jelly when it passes along, as well as pickles, olives, and cheese. There is no incongruity, at such a time, in having a slice of baked ham and a slice of angel-food cake on one's plate or in one's hands. They harmonize beautifully both in the color scheme and in the gastronomic scheme. At a picnic my boyhood training reaches its full fruition: "Eat what is set before you and ask no questions." These things I do.

That's a good rule for reading, too, just to read what is set before you and ask no questions. I'm thinking now of the reader member of my dual nature, not the student member. I like to cater somewhat to both these members. When the reader member is having his inning, I like to give him free rein and not hamper him by any lock-step or stereotyped method or course. I like to lead him to a picnic table and dismiss him with the mere statement that "Heaven helps those who help themselves," and thus leave him to his own devices. If Southey's, "The Curse of Kehama," happens to be nearest his plate, he will naturally begin with that as I did with the deviled eggs. Or he may nibble at "The House-Boat on the Styx" while some one is passing the Shakespeare along. He may like Emerson, and ask for a second helping, and that's all right, too, for that's a nourishing sort of food. Having partaken of this generously, he will enjoy all the more the jelly when it comes along in the form of "Nonsense Anthology." The more I think of it the more I see that reading is very like a picnic dinner. It is all good, and one takes the food which is nearest him, whether pie or pickles.

When any one asks me what I am reading, I become much embarrassed. I may be reading a catalogue of books at the time, or the book notices in some magazine, but such reading may not seem orthodox at all to the one who asks the question. My reading may be too desultory or too personal to be paraded in public. I don't make it a practice to tell all the neighbors what I ate for breakfast. I like to saunter along through the book just as I ride in a gondola when in Venice. I'm not going anywhere, but get my enjoyment from merely being on the way. I pay the gondolier and then let him have his own way with me. So with the book. I pay the money and then abandon myself to it. If it can make me laugh, why, well and good, and I'll laugh. If it causes me to shed tears, why, let the tears flow. They may do me good. If I ever become conscious of the number of the page of the