Perhaps it is not well to class among Home Amusements a series of entertainments which imply, at first sight, the getting away from home. But, as the basket of luncheon has to be packed at home, and the best part of a picnic is the getting home again, we must be permitted a divergence.

It is curious to see how emphatically fond of picnics the Americans are. A universal national hunger seems to seize the tired cit as the first warm day of May beams upon us. They “babble of green fields.” Best of all charities those which send the poor children off, on boats and trains, for a whiff of pure air! It is the blessed privilege of the rich to thin out the crowded tenement, and to send the overplus of an irrepressible civilization back to Nature for a moment.

But, for a Home Amusement in the country, what can compare with the joy of getting ready for a picnic? The baskets for the provisions (and be sure, Mary, not to forget the salt or the sugar), the coffee-pot that will stand being poked down into the wood-coals, the fine old swinging iron kettle, the bread, the knives, and the pail of ice. Ah!

Then, as to carriages. Not the luxurious cushioned barouche, but the shabbiest old rattletraps about the place are the proper ones. A good old hay-wagon is the very best—if it have hay in it. It may do very well at Newport for the luxurious to drive out to one of Mr. Bennett’s picnics in a four-in-hand or a drag, or a Victoria or a barouche; but in the country take the buckboard, the old Rockaway wagon, which holds nine—the more the merrier—the farm-wagon, and the market-cart. Filled with youth, beauty, and jollity, these become the chariots of Apollo.

It is not always easy to get mamma to a picnic; but it is good for her, and for all the others, if she will go. She is apt to be anxious about rain, and is afraid of farmer Bell’s bull; and she should be allowed to go in an easy carriage. She also fears to take cold, and is mightily frightened at those crazy boats on the lake. But it is better for all parties if these fears are assuaged and she really goes. The change does her good, and she acts as a temporary restraint on the too volatile spirits of the party.

Another power hard to coerce is Statira, who is the head of the commissary department. Statira, cook and factotum, was brought up on the wrong side of a mullein-patch herself, and she is not in love with the country. She remembers the woods as a place where she went to look, in her youth, for recalcitrant cows; and in winter, how cold and bleak the woods were! Her present warm and cultivated kitchen, with stationary wash-tubs, is to her a far more agreeable spot. She hesitates, as the young people ask for her delicate apple-pies and her delicious cakes, “to cram into baskets,” to “eat out in the pasture,” as she sniffingly avers.

However, although Statira is a greater tyrant than Nero, the young people prevail, and the picnic gets started somehow. What a jolly hour is passed in driving through the still valley to the brow of yonder hill, which commands a view of the whole country! Then Susan, the thoughtful one, dreads lest the coffee-pot has been forgotten. Hurried search! The coffee-pot is found under a back seat. Happiness restored, the songs go on, and the murmuring pines and the hemlocks take up the wondrous tale.

Then the party arrive at the lake. The girls take off their hats. The winds play with the “tangles in Nerea’s hair.” The picnic is a nice opportunity for a pretty foot, a fine figure, and a splendid head of hair—so it is said. Then come rambles into the forest.

That is a pretty story of a nymph who appeared on the edge of a forest, but who disappeared as she was followed, until, at last, as her lover pursued her farther into the forest, he threw his arms about a white hawthorn-tree. It is the world’s earliest romance that the first courtship took place at a picnic. Roses and briers twine around lovers for ever, and the lotus and the buttercup tell the same story.

Picnics are healthy; but should be appropriately dressed. Balmoral boots, broad hats, and flannel dresses, warm, plain, and serviceable. A white Marseilles which will wash—percales and cambrics and ginghams will do; but no finery should be allowed. At Newport one may try the Watteau combination of brocade and satin, with fine old house, grounds, and trellised arcades. But at a country picnic Watteau dresses are out of place. Our climate is too fitful for safe picnicking, as we dread rain. In England they do not care, but lunch at Ascot, with the rain pouring into the champagne. But here we need to go prepared with aquiscutums and umbrellas, and a neighboring barn is well in the near distance.

It is a common want, this need of the confessional of Nature. We leave our morbid fancies, our discontents, in the bosom of our dear common mother, and we come back as cheerful as is the dappled deer. We like to go back to that idyllic spot where the race started.

In the spring certain natures get frisky, like the colts. One pasture will not hold them. We get tired of white man’s work. It was a true reading of the human heart which made the Greeks place Apollo with the shepherds of Admetus, and Jove stooping to the people of the hill-sides. “The populous all-loving solitude” of Nature draws us with a potent hand. Our houses are a false shell. Titania’s subjects will rebel. That rural solitude, which has no conventionality; that desert rock, against which the noisy wave of human folly breaks itself; the dense forest, where is sung the mighty hymn of the pines; the brow of the hill which the sun kisses last; the lone seashore; the distant heath; that cloud-shadow on the mountain—these are all necessary to us once a year. We must go once to “La roche qui pleure.” We must go where the forest-growths expand in all their strength and splendor. We must find the shyest wild flower, the most untamable vine. It is in the fable of Daphne that we read the deep significance, the poetry, the true meaning of our love of the picnic.

Who of us—comfortable and well housed—but has in some moment of nomadic instinct envied the tramp and the gypsy their life of chapleted ease, as they lie on the greensward, hugging dear mother Nature to their very bosoms? Who has not some wild, untamed blood in his veins—some fellowship for the Indian—some desire for the flitting caress of the passing breeze, or the somber greeting of the mountain shadow?

But no more poetry, if you please. We are getting hungry. Where are those baskets? Ah! the cold roast beef, the wing of a chicken, and the salt, not forgotten!

Those hard-boiled eggs—how good they are! So glad that chicken-raising has been one of our Home Amusements! Just a high picket-fence, a few good hens, some boxes, and a little attention, and what eggs these are! Mamma will not, however, eat them; she says they are unwholesome. But she takes a piece of the breast of a noble pullet, and a cup of coffee in a tin mug, made by Sam, best of cooks, amateur—college-bred cook—who has boiled it under the trees! and laid the grounds with a dash of cold water. Sam puts his own clearness and strength into the coffee.

And now for an hour’s reverie by the side of the lake; and then a rough-and-tumble drive home! How tired, ragged, jagged, disheveled, and happy we are as we get home!

Statira has built a splendid wood-fire for us, and has a supper of broiled chicken, cold ham, preserves and cream, baked potatoes, and toast, and hot biscuits which might tempt the virtue of an anchorite. We have no such proud resistance. We have brought an appetite from the place where they make them; and we can eat hot biscuits and still wrap the drapery of our couch about us and lie down to pleasant dreams.

A picnic is, therefore, a Home Amusement. It has home at both ends; else it would not be a picnic.