Part 18

Wild flowers, ferns, and grasses, the ground-pine, the checkerberry, and the partridge berry make the most exquisite garlands, and it is only of late--when a few great geniuses have discovered that the field daisy is the prettiest of flowers, that the best beauty is that which is at our hands wherever we are, that the greatest rarity is the grass in the meadow--that we have reached the true meaning of interior decoration.

Helen Hunt, in one of her prettiest papers, describes the beauty of kinnikinick, a lovely vine which grows all over Colorado. Although we have not that, we can even in winter find the hemlock boughs, the mistletoe, the holly, for our decorations. Of course, hot-house flowers and smilax, if they can be obtained, are very beautiful and desirable, but they are not within the reach of every purse, or of every country house.

Sheaves of wheat, tied with fine ribbons and placed at intervals around a room, can be made to have the beauty of an armorial bearing. These, alternating with banners and hemlock boughs, are very effective. All these forms which Nature gives us have suggested the Corinthian capital, the Ionic pillar, the most graceful of Greek carvings. The acanthus leaf was the inspiration of the architect who built the Acropolis.

Vine leaves, especially after they begin to turn, are capable of infinite suggestion, and we all remember the recent worship of the sunflower. Hop vines and clematis, especially after the last has gone to seed, remain long as ornaments.

As for the refreshments to be served,--the oyster stew, the ice cream, the good home-made cake, coffee, and tea are within the reach of every country housekeeper, and are in their way unrivalled. Of course, if she wishes she can add chicken salad, boned turkey, _pâté de foie gras_, and punch, hot or cold.

If it is in winter, the coachmen outside must not be forgotten. Some hot coffee and oysters should be sent to these patient sufferers, for our coachmen are not dressed as are the Russians, in fur from head to foot. If possible, there should be a good fire in the kitchen, to which these attendants on our pleasure could be admitted to thaw out.

A PICNIC.

"Come hither, come hither, the broom was in blossom all over yon rise, There went a wild murmur of brown bees about it with songs from the wood. We shall never be younger, O Love! let us forth to the world 'neath our eyes-- Ay! the world is made young, e'en as we, and right fair is her youth, and right good."

Appetites flourish in the free air of hills and meadows, and after drinking in the ozone of the sea, one feels like drinking something else. There is a very good story of a reverend bishop who with a friend went a-fishing, like Peter, and being very thirsty essayed to draw the cork of a claret bottle. In his zeal he struck his bottle against a stone, and the claret oozed out to refresh the thirsty earth, instead of that precious porcelain of human clay of which the bishop was made. His remark to his friend was, "James, you are a layman, why don't you say something?"

Now to avoid having our layman or our reverend wish to say something, let us try to suggest what they should eat and what they should drink.

There are many kinds of picnics,--fashionable ones at Newport and other watering-places, where the French waiters of the period are told to get up a repast as if at the Casino; there are clam-bakes which are ideal, and there are picnics at Lenox and at Sharon, where the hotel keeper will help to fill the baskets.

But the real picnic, which calls for talent and executive ability, should emanate from some country house, where two or three other country houses co-operate and help. Then what jolly drives in the brakes, what queer old family horses and antediluvian wagons, what noble dog-carts, and what prim pony phaetons can join in the procession. The day should be fine, and the place selected a hillside with trees, commanding a fine view. This is at least desirable. The necessity for a short walk, a short scramble after leaving the horses, should not be disregarded.

The night before the picnic, which presumably starts early, the lady of the house should see to it that a boiled ham of perfect flavour is in readiness, and she may flank it with a boiled tongue, four roasted chickens, a game pie, and any amount of stale bread to cut into sandwiches.

Now a sandwich can be at once the best and the worst thing in the world, but to make it the best the bread should be cut very thin, the butter, which must be as fresh as a cowslip, should be spread with deft fingers, then a slice of ham as thin as a wafer with not too much fat must be laid between, with a _soupçon_ of mustard. The prepared ham which comes in cans is excellent for making sandwiches. Cheese sandwiches, substituting a thin slice of American fresh cheese for the ham, are delicious, and some rollicking good-livers toast the cheese.

Tongue, cold beef, and even cold sausages make excellent varieties of sandwich. To prevent their becoming the "sand which is under your feet" cover them over night with a damp napkin.

Chicken can be eaten for itself alone, but it should be cut into very convenient fragments, judiciously salted and wrapped in a very white napkin.

The game or veal pie must be in a strong earthen dish, and having been baked the day before, its pieces will have amalgamated with the crust, and it will cut into easily handled slices.

All must be packed in luncheon baskets with little twisted cornucopias holding pepper and salt, hard-boiled eggs, the patty by itself, croquettes, if they happen to be made, cold fried oysters, excellent if in batter and well-drained after cooking; no article must be allowed to touch another.

If cake and pastry be taken, each should have a separate basket. Fruit also should be carefully packed by itself, for if food gets mixed and mussy, even a mountain appetite will shun it.

A bottle of olives is a welcome addition, and pickles and other relishes may be included. Sardines are also in order.

Now what to drink? Cold tea and iced coffee prepared the night before, the cream and sugar put in just before starting, should always be provided. They are capital things to climb on, to knit up the "ravelled sleeve of care," and if somewhat exciting to the nerves, will be found the best thirst-quenchers.

These beverages should be carefully bottled and firmly corked,--and don't forget the corkscrew. Plenty of tin cups, or those strong glass beer-mugs which you can throw across the room without breaking, should also be taken.

Claret is the favourite wine for picnics, as being light and refreshing. Ginger ale is excellent and cheap and compact. "Champagne," says Walter Besant in his novel "By Celia's Arbour" is a wine as Catholic as the Athanasian Creed, because it goes well with chicken and with the more elaborate _pâté de foie gras_.

Some men prefer sherry with their lunch, some take beer. If you have room and a plentiful cellar, take all these things. But tea and coffee and ginger ale will do for any one, anywhere.

It has been suggested by those who have suffered losses from mischievous friends, that a composite basket containing everything should be put in each carriage, but this is refining the matter.

Arrived at the picnic-ground, the whole force should be employed by the hostess as an amiable body of waiters. The ladies should set the tables, and the men bring water from the spring. The less ceremony the better.

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.

Of course, _pâté de foie gras_, sandwiches, boned turkey, jellied tongue, the various cold birds, as partridges, quails, pheasant, and chicken, and raw oysters, can be taken to a very elaborate picnic near a large town. Salmon dressed with green sauce, lobster salad, every kind of salad, is in order if you can only get it there, and "_caviare_ to the general." Cold terrapin is not to be despised; eaten on a bit of bread it is an excellent dainty, and so is the cold fried oyster.

Public picnics, like Sunday-school picnics, fed with ice cream and strawberries; or the clam bake, a unique and enjoyable affair by the sea, are in the hands of experts, and need no description here. The French people picnic every day in the _Bois de Boulogne_, the woods of Versailles, and even on their asphalt, eating out of doors when they can. It is a very strange thing that we do not improve our fine climate by eating our dinners and breakfasts with the full draught of an unrivalled ozone.

PASTIMES OF LADIES.

Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice, stole in and out, As if they feared the light; But oh, she dances such a way! No sun upon an Easter day Is half so fine a sight. SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

The "London Times" says that the present season has seen "driving jump to a great height of favour amongst fashionable women."

It is a curious expression, but enlightens us as to the liberty which even so great an authority takes with our common language. There is no doubt of the fact that the pony phaeton and the pair of ponies are becoming a great necessity to an energetic woman. The little pony and the Ralli cart, as a ladies' pastime, is a familiar figure in the season at Newport, at a thousand country places, at the seaside, in our own Central Park, and all through the West and South.

It has been much more the custom for ladies in the West and South to drive themselves, than for those at the North; consequently they drive better. Only those who know how to drive well ought ever to attempt it, for they not only endanger their own lives, but a dozen other lives. Whoever has seen a runaway carriage strike another vehicle, and has beheld the breaking up, can realize for the first time the tremendous force of an object in motion. The little Ralli cart can become a battering-ram of prodigious force.

No form of recreation is so useful and so becoming as horseback exercise. No English woman looks so well as when turned out for out-of-door exercise. And our American women, who buy their habits and hats in London, are getting to have the same _chic_. Indeed, so immensely superior is the London habit considered, that the French circus-women who ride in the Bois, making so great a sensation, go over to London to have their habits made, and thus return the compliment which English ladies pay to Paris, in having all their dinner gowns and tea gowns made there. Perhaps disliking this sort of copy, the Englishwomen are becoming careless of their appearance on horseback, and are coming out in a straw hat, a covert coat, and a cotton skirt.

The soft felt hat has long been a favourite on the Continent, at watering-places for the English; and it is much easier for the head. Still, in case of a fall it does not save the head like a hard, masculine hat.

We have not yet, as a nation, taken to cycling for women; but many Englishwomen go all over the globe on a tricycle. A husband and wife are often seen on a tricycle near London, and women who lead sedentary lives, in offices and schools, enjoy many of their Saturday afternoons in this way.

Boating needs to be cultivated in America. It is a superb exercise for developing a good figure; and to manage a punt has become a common accomplishment for the riverside girls. Ladies have regattas on the Thames.

Fencing, which many actresses learn, is a very admirable process for developing the figure. The young Princesses of Wales are adepts in this. It requires an outfit consisting of a dainty tunic reaching to the knees, a fencing-jacket of soft leather with tight sleeves, gauntlet gloves, a mask, a pair of foils, and costing about fifteen dollars.

American women as a rule are not fond of walking. There must be something in the nature of an attraction or a duty to rouse our delicate girls to walk. They will not do it for their health alone. Gymnastic teaching is, however, giving them more strength, and it would be well if in every family of daughters there were some calisthenic training, to develop the muscles, and to induce a more graceful walk.

To teach a girl to swim is almost a duty, and such splendid physical exercises will have a great influence over that nervous distress which our climate produces with its over-fulness of oxygen.

If girls do not like to walk, they all like to dance, and it is not intended as a pun when we mention that "a great jump" has been made back to the old-fashioned dancing, in which freedom of movement is allowed. Those who saw Mary Anderson's matchless grace in the Winter's Tale all tried to go and dance like her, and to see Ellen Terry's spring, as the pretty Olivia, teaches one how entirely beautiful is this strong command of one's muscles. From the German cotillion, back to the Virginia reel, is indeed a bound.

Our grandfathers knew how to dance. We are fast getting back to them. The traditions of Taglioni still lingered fifty years ago. The earliest dancing-masters were Frenchmen, and our ancestors were taught to _pirouette_ as did Vestris when he was so obliging as to say after a royal command, "The house of Vestris has always danced for that of Bourbon."

The galop has, during the long langour of the dance, alone held its own, in the matter of jollity. The glide waltz, the redowa, the stately minuet, give only the slow and graceful motions. The galop has always been a great favourite with the Swedes, Danes, and Russians, while the redowa reminds one of the graceful Viennese who dance it so well. The mazourka, danced to wild Polish music, is a poetical and active affair.

The introduction of Hungarian bands and Hungarian music is another reason why dancing has become a "hop, skip and a bound," without losing dignity or grace. Activity need not be vulgar.

The German cotillion, born many years ago at Vienna to meet the requirements of court etiquette, is still the fashionable dance with which the ball closes. Its favours, beginning with flowers and ribbons and bits of tinsel, have now ripened into fans, bracelets, gold scarf-pins and pencil-cases, and many things more expensive. Favours may cost five thousand dollars for a fashionable ball, or dance, as they say in London.

The German is a dance of infinite variety, and to lead it requires a man of head. One such leader, who can construct new figures, becomes a power in society. The waltz, galop, redowa, and polka step can all be utilized in it. There is a slow walk in the quadrille figure, a stately march, the bows and courtesies of the old minuet, and above all, the _tour de valse_, which is the means of locomotion from place to place. The changeful exigencies of the various figures lead the forty or fifty, or the two hundred to meet, exchange greetings, dance with each other, and change their geographical position many times. Indeed no army goes through more evolutions.

A pretty figure is _La Corbeille, l'Anneau, et la Fleur_. The first couple performs a _tour de valse_, after which the gentleman presents the lady with a basket, containing a ring and a flower, then resumes his seat. The lady presents the ring to one gentleman, the flower to another, and the basket to the third. The gentleman to whom she presents the ring selects a partner for himself, the gentleman who receives the flower dances with the lady who presents it, while the other gentleman holds the basket in his hand and dances alone.

The kaleidoscope is one of the prettiest figures. The four couples perform a _tour de valse_, then form as for a quadrille; the next four couples in order take positions behind the first four couples, each of the latter couples facing the same as the couples in front. At a signal from the leader, the ladies of the inner couples cross right hands, move entirely round and turn into places by giving left hands to their partners. At the same time the outer couples waltz half round to opposite places. At another signal the inner couples waltz entirely round, and finish facing outward. At the same time the outer couples _chassent croisé_ and turn at corners with right hands, then _dechassent_ and turn partners with left hands. Valse _générale_ with _vis à vis_.

_La Cavalier Trompé_ is another favourite figure. Five or six couples perform a _tour de valse_. They afterwards place themselves in ranks of two, one couple behind the other. The lady of the first gentleman leaves him and seeks a gentleman of another column. While this is going on the first gentleman must not look behind him. The first lady and the gentleman whom she has selected separate and advance on tip-toe on each side of the column, in order to deceive the gentleman at the head, and endeavour to join each other for a waltz. If the first gentleman is fortunate enough to seize his lady, he leads off in a waltz; if not, he must remain at his post until he is able to take a lady. The last gentleman remaining dances with the last lady.

To give a German in a private house, a lady has all the furniture removed from her parlours, the floor covered with crash over the carpet, and a set of folding-chairs for the couples to sit in. A bare wooden floor is preferable to the carpet and crash.

It is considered that all taking part in a German are introduced to one another, and on no condition whatever must a lady, so long as she remains in the German, refuse to speak or to dance with any gentleman whom she may chance to receive as a partner. Every American should learn that he can speak to any one whom he meets at a friend's house. The roof is an introduction, and, for the purpose of making his hostess comfortable, the guest should, at dinner-party and dance, speak to his next neighbour.

The laws of the German are so strict, and to many so tiresome, that a good many parties have abjured it, and merely dance the round dances, the lancers and quadrilles, winding up with the Sir Roger de Coverley or the Virginia Reel.

The leader of the German must have a comprehensive glance, a quick ear and eye, and a great belief in himself. General Edward Ferrero, who made a good general, declared that he owed all his success in war to his training as a dancing-master. With all other qualities, the leader of the German must have tact. It is no easy matter to get two hundred people into all sorts of combinations and mazes and then to get them out again, to offend nobody, and to produce that elegant kaleidoscope called the German.

The term _tour de valse_ is used technically, meaning that the couple or couples performing it execute the round dance designated by the leader once round the room. Should the room be small, they make a second tour. After the introductory _tour de valse_ care must be taken by those who perform it not to select ladies and gentlemen who are on the floor, but from among those who are seated. When the leader claps his hands to warn those who are prolonging the valse, they must immediately cease dancing.