CHAPTER XIII.THE PICNIC.

A joyful hour! anticipated keen,With zest of youthful appetite ...To spread that table in the wilderness;The spot selected with deliberate care,Fastidious from variety of choice,Where all was beautiful ...With joyous exultation, guests were ledTo our green banquet-room.Caroline Bowles.

A joyful hour! anticipated keen,

With zest of youthful appetite ...

To spread that table in the wilderness;

The spot selected with deliberate care,

Fastidious from variety of choice,

Where all was beautiful ...

With joyous exultation, guests were led

To our green banquet-room.

Caroline Bowles.

Norman was very sorry to part with his dear young friends, Alfred and Herbert; but he was very glad that his Aunt and Uncle Lester, and his Aunt Clara, were going with them, so that he had not to say good-by to them. As he had traveled over this road when he came west, he had seen these broad prairies before, but they were now enameled with brighter hues. Great patches of purple phlox, a profusion of yellow flowers, and brightred lilies, made all the broad expanse a vast flower-garden. His Aunt Clara said that many of the prairie flowers were disappearing in the progress of cultivation. The cattle that now covered the plains destroyed them, and the plow rooted them up.

“Yes,” said his uncle to Norman, “your Aunt Clara sometimes fancies her mission is to cultivate a blooming inclosure, in which she will preserve all the prairie flowers from the extinction to which they are rapidly tending.”

Geneva, which they soon reached, is a pretty town on the Fox River, and the house of Henry’s aunt, whom they had come to visit, had a view of the river and its wooded islands. Norman’s Aunt Clayton was very glad to see him, and very kind to him, so that he was very happy with his new relations. His aunt would bring him, several times a day, a great tumbler of good rich milk, the like ofwhich he had not often seen. She sent for Willie Clayton to meet Norman, and the boys asked permission to bathe in the river, Willie assuring Mrs. Lester that it was perfectly safe. They were absent for a long time, and as neither of the boys could swim, Mrs. Lester became very anxious as the dinner-hour approached, and they had not yet returned. Mr. Clayton very kindly offered to go in search of them, and while he was gone the boys made their appearance. They did not know that they had been so long away; they had waded over to the island, and the time slipped away more quickly than they thought.

After dinner Norman said his back was very much burned, exposed, as it had been, to the fierce rays of the sun. His mother put some flour on it, but after a while, it became so painful that he had to lie down on the bed and have it covered with flour. His neck, and back, andarms were all bright scarlet, and he suffered very much from the intense burning.

The next day there was to be a school picnic in the grove, and Willie was to speak on the occasion. Norman said it would be impossible for him to dress himself; but when the animating strains of the band floated in his window, as the procession marched to the grove, he thought he might make the effort. His mother helped him to put on his clothes, as his back was all blistered, and he walked with her and his aunt and uncle rather soberly to the picnic.

The children were seated on benches under the trees, and a platform was erected for the speakers. Norman was soon seated beside Willie, who was also suffering from his sun-burned back. The band was stationed near them, and between the recitations and declamations of the children, “discoursed most excellent music.”

After a while the company were invitedto partake of refreshments, and, preceded by the band, they marched to another part of the grove, where tables were tastefully arranged, covered with an abundance of good cake, and ornamented with flowers.

Norman and Willie were in the front rank next to the rope that separated the children from the tables; but the pressure from behind was rather severe on their tender backs, so they came to where their mothers and aunts were standing.

Mrs. Lester was happy to recognize in one of the young men most active in providing for the wants of the children, one whom she had known in her former beloved home in the East. Of his mother, who had been a near neighbor, she retained a most kindly remembrance; and as she had been suddenly and recently called to her home in the heavens, Mrs. Lester was glad to learn that her son, left with his brother almost alone in theworld, was active in this western town in the Sabbath school and in the temperance cause, maintaining a consistent religious character. A great field for usefulness is opened in the West to Christian young men. So many young men, in seeding their fortunes in these new and thriving towns, throw off the restraining influence of their pious homes; absent themselves from the house of God, and are thus easily led aside by a thousand encircling temptations.

Exercises in geography, arithmetic, and declamation followed the feast, some of which the band applauded in a very graceful manner. A number of children gathered around the musicians, and one little boy, in a bright red frock, stood leaning against his father, close by the great drum, his eyes fixed on its great circumference, and his eyelids winking every time it was struck.

After the exercises one of the ministers made a very good speech, in which hetold the children that if they wanted to rise above being mere drudges at the dictation of others, they must study, they must work, they must learn to think. What they did, they must do with their might; when they played, they must play in earnest; and when they studied, they must study in earnest; and that to be industrious and to be in earnest, was the only way to be anything, or to do anything in the world.

He made the children laugh when he told them that in some parts of New Hampshire the fields were so stony, that it was jocosely said that the farmers sharpened their sheep’s noses that they might eat the grass growing between the stones. This was a wonderful story for western children, who never saw stones on their broad fertile prairies.

As the band played its farewell, the company left the ground greatly pleased with the day’s entertainment.

Back to Index Next