"Picnic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which I have been telling, I went to a picnic gotten up by Mrs. Purblind, for the entertainment and delectation of Mr. Purblind's cousin, now visiting her, a frivolous young thing, between whom and myself there was not even the weather in common, for she would label "simply horrid" a lovely gray day, containing all sorts of possibilities ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... a bouldery path through firs and birches, looking into black caves, peeping over steep cliffs, and at last reaching the wind-swept summit to look off through miles of emptiness. An adventure, coming home from a picnic as evening was falling, to sit snug in that creaking capacious wagon which belonged to Stouty's father, and to watch the lights and shadows that darted in and out of the pines as the lantern swung beneath ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... A picnic life; from love to love, From faith to faith they lightly move, And yet, hard-eyed philosopher, The flightiest maid that ever hovered 40 To me your thought-webs fine discovered, No lens to see ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... fetched along one of those hand-electric torches, did you, Jack?" he exclaimed. "Well, a flashlight never had a better chance to make itself useful than right now. It's going to be a picnic from here on. I can see every little twig and blade of grass; and as for our trail, a fellow could follow it with one eye shut. Thank goodness! our troubles for the day are ended; unless it comes on to rain cats and dogs before ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... stopped for lunch. In Wyoming quantity has a great deal more to do with satisfaction than does quality; after half a day's drive you won't care so much what it is you're going to eat as you will that there is enough of it. That is a lesson I learned long ago; so our picnic was real. There were no ants in the pie, but that is accounted for by there being no pie. Our road had crossed the creek, and we were resting in the shade of a quaking-asp grove, high up on the sides of the Bad Land hills. For miles far below ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... would have won honors in a cooking school. There was nothing else to cook, his kettle of beans having been unceremoniously dumped because the pot was black; but Kitty had the table spotlessly clean, there was an assortment of potted meats and picnic knicknacks in the middle of it, and Lucy had faithfully scoured the dishes; so supper was ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... another occasion, one of a large and merry party who had obtained permission to picnic in the grounds, but who, deterred by the threatening aspect of the skies from gypsying (as had originally been proposed) by the side of the Tweed, were allowed, by Sir Adam Ferguson's interest with the housekeeper, to assemble round the table ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... advancing; they were at Rocky Face Ridge. Now, for old Joe's generalship. We have seen him in camp, now we will see him in action. We are marched to meet the enemy; we occupy Turner's Gap at Tunnel Hill. Now, come on, Mr. Yank—we are keen for an engagement. It is like a picnic; the soldiers are ruddy and fat, and strong; whoop! whoop! hurrah! come on, Mr. Yank. We form line of battle on top of Rocky Face Ridge, and here we are face to face with the enemy. Why don't you unbottle your thunderbolts and dash us to pieces? Ha! here it comes; the boom ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... the male member of the chain-gang, "I done cut my woman with a razor 'cause I see her racking down the street like a proud coon with another gent, like what Sarah Jane's brother telled me he done at the picnic." ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... the yacht filled. The priest stood watching her pass behind a rocky headland, knowing now that her destination was Kilronan Abbey. But was there water enough in the strait at this season of the year? Hardly enough to float a boat of her size. If she stuck, the picnic-party would get into the small boat, and, thus lightened, the yacht might be floated into the other arm of the lake. 'A pleasant day indeed for a sail,' and in imagination he followed the yacht down the lake, past ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... the Lesser Isisi to settle a religious palaver—Bucongo of the Lesser Isisi is getting a little too enthusiastic a Christian, and Ahmet has been sending some queer reports. I've been putting off the palaver for weeks, but Administration says it has no objection to my making a picnic of duty—so we'll ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... dignified, like some sort of a heathen ghost, an' when it came to a pebble in the path it would walk around it an' not step over, all the time holdin' a hand lookin' glass to see that her toe didn't show. I just took one side-eye at Jabez an' his face looked like a storm cloud at a picnic; but when Barbie see who I was she tore off the veil, gathered up her skirts, an' yelled, "Happy! Happy ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... men, that is, those who were really strong and purposeful, seem to derive so much satisfaction! On the following Monday at Bald Hill, when Hollis Creek and Meadow Brook fraternized together, in the annual union picnic, she found occasion for the most direct tete-a-tete of all anent ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... A periodical picnic for the American People. Held in booths, where the Voter puts in his ballot, and The Machine elects whatever it chooses. A day when the lowliest may make their mark and even beggars may ride; when the Glad Mit gets promiscuous and everything ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... not been playing. There was business on hand and she had been downtown to buy eggs for the picnic, with the usual result. She had never yet succeeded in bringing home an unbroken dozen, nor did she ever hope to; but she was really out of temper at the extraordinary dampness of the paper bag, to which her two ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... "glub-glub," and so I had to teach her the names of things and she would shake all her hair down and dance a war-dance, when I got her to understand. This was when we'd reached our Island. There was one across the river from us, and on a corner of it we used to picnic and play. ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... The picnic lunch among the big stones at the foot of the Pyramid was not a very gay affair. Miss Dawkins talked more than any one else, being determined to show that she bore her defeat gallantly. Her conversation, ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... replied Win. "It's Mont Orgueil, over the other side of the island. Let's have a picnic there to-morrow, take our lunch and stay all day. Mother, you must come. Don't say you've promised to ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... to have such a picnic!" Zara told him. "Papa and I have brought a new tablecloth, and some pretty cups and saucers, and spoons, and knives, and forks—and see! such buns! English buns for you to toast, Mirko mio! You must be the little cook, while I lay ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... A.M., 74 degrees F; noon, fell to 72 degrees F. We had a picnic at the old mission station, where I went accompanied by Lieutenant Baker, Mr. Higginbotham, and my wife, to measure out the camp and fort. As usual in England, the picnic brought on heavy rain, which lasted from 9.30 a.m. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... arrangement of gifts. While we were young, my mother distinguished the "birthday child"—probably in accordance with some custom of her native country—by a silk scarf. She liked to celebrate her own birthday, too, and ever since I can remember—it was on the 25th of July—we had a picnic ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... September 28th.—A picnic party in the woods, yesterday, in honor of little Frank Dana's birthday, he being six years old. I strolled out, after dinner, with Mr. Bradford, and in a lonesome glade we met the apparition of an Indian chief, dressed in appropriate costume of blanket, feathers, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... most would call our drudgery," she says, "there came a day devoted to amusement. Once we had a masquerade picnic in the woods, where we were thrown into convulsions of laughter at the sight of George W. Curtis dressed as Fanny Ellsler, in a low-necked, short-sleeved, book-muslin dress and a tiny ruffled apron, making courtesies and pirouetting down the path. It was much out ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... settling in to do—for the house had been left in perfect order by its last tenant. But Captain Tremaine had fetched her from the hotel where she had stayed in London; he had bought her first-class ticket (Enid always liked someone to pay for her); they had shared a delightful picnic lunch which he provided in the train; and then, finally, reluctantly, he had left The Trellis House—after a rather silly, tiresome, little scene, during which he had vowed that she should marry him, even if it came to ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... nap, Mother?" she added a minute later, as Mrs. Crain, with a slight flush on her faded cheeks, began to stack the dessert dishes. "You mustn't lay a hand on these dishes, or Bonnie and I will have our dishwashing picnic spoiled.... Run along now. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... decide the matter in time! She will bring her little intellect to bear on it as if it were a picnic for her Sunday-school class!" Jean stood silent a while. "Miss Vance," she said suddenly, "let me engineer this affair for a few ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... his Apartment to the Galleys or chasing homeward to grab off a few wasteful hours of Slumber, he would see People of the Lower Classes going out to the Parks with Picnic Baskets, or lined up at the Vaudeville Palaces, or watching a hard-faced Soubrette demonstrate ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... copy of 'Rosalind and Helen', which he had lent to Miss Flower, and which she lost in this wood on a picnic. This and a bald though well-meant notice in the 'Athenaeum' exhaust its literary history for ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... then," I begged, "both of you? Come this afternoon! The dressmakers can follow you, Eve. It isn't far—an hour in the train and twenty minutes in the motor. We may have to picnic a little just to start with, but I know that the most important of the servants are there, ready ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the scope of this work to chronicle all their doings—how, notwithstanding balls at night, they were up to chapel in the morning, and attended flower-shows at Worcester and musical promenades in New College, and managed to get down the river for a picnic at Nuneham, besides seeing everything that was worth seeing in all the colleges. How it was done, no man can tell; but done it was, and they seemed only the better for it all. They were waiting at the gates of the Theatre ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... guess I've not had enjoyment like this since I left Noo York. Bar a scrap with a French sailor at Wapping—an' that warn't much of a picnic neither—I've not had a show fur real pleasure in this dod-rotted Continent, where there ain't no b'ars nor no Injuns, an' wheer nary man goes heeled. Slow there, Judge! Don't you rush this business! I want a show for my money this ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... The two doors before mentioned were in the middle of this wall, and enclosed the Villefort and Saint-Meran coffins. There grief might freely expend itself without being disturbed by the trifling loungers who came from a picnic party to visit Pere-la-Chaise, or by lovers who make ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the same time that they had an infectious eye trouble; yet we thought we were using different towels and otherwise taking sanitary precautions. Last summer a Vassar graduate took a party of tenement children for a country picnic. She returned with head lice that required constant attention for weeks. What then may we expect of children who live in homes where there is neither water, time, nor privacy for bathing, where one towel must serve a family of six, where mothers work for ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... festival was impending at Colac, to consist of a regatta on the lake, the first we ever celebrated, and a picnic on its banks. All the people far and near invited themselves to the feast, from the most extensive of squatters to the oldest of old hands. The blackfellows were there, too—what was left of them. Billy Leura walked all the way from Camperdown, and on the day before the regatta ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... sorr," the policeman said. "But even then I don't believe there would have been trouble. But yisterday, some rich lady, plannin' to give the children a picnic this afternoon and a treat, told them they were all goin' out to the country and that they must tell their mothers they wouldn't be ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... he remembers the picnic in the woods, the glorious sail across the bay, the white foam in the wake of the boat, the very tint of the flowers that he gathered,—in fact, he remembers everything in which he is interested. If we would have him remember ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... abilities of the lady participants are necessarily called into action—those talents which have fallen somewhat into disrepute, notwithstanding Professor BLOT'S magnanimous efforts to restore the glories of the once honored culinary art. Therefore a picnic may be considered as a great moral agency in promoting domestic happiness; for what is so likely to touch the heart and arouse the slumbering sensibility of a husband and father, as a roast of beef done to a charm, or an ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... Burr and Burton Seminary, Manchester, Vt., an old country co-educational school; and one year at Radcliffe. Writer and tutor by profession. Chief interests are anti-vivisection, socialism, and above all, pacifism of the "extreme" kind. She likes best of everything in the world to go on a picnic with plenty of children. First short story, "The Mellen Idolatry," Delineator, about 1900. Author of "A Turnpike Lady," "The Spinster," "Fellow Captains" (with Dorothy Canfield), and "Portraits and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... held a picnic reunion in the month of August, 1941, on Blackberry Creek where the blood of both had been shed during the feud, and at the gathering a good time was had by all with plenty of fried ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... the day after this, when the Bluebird had gone a little farther up the creek, that Mrs. Bobbsey planned a little picnic on shore. They were not far from ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... records of the recent campaign were being laboriously yawned over at odd intervals during the sunshiny days, far more thought and time and attention were being given to riding, driving, tramping and picnic parties—even croquet coming in for honorable mention—while every night had its "hop" and some nights their ball that lasted well toward morning, and for the first time in its history "head-quarters" was actually ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... not the pleasure of an intimate acquaintance with Grace Forrester. I have seen her in the distance, watering the flowers in her garden, and on these occasions her stance struck me as graceful. And once, at a picnic, I observed her killing wasps with a teaspoon, and was impressed by the freedom of the wrist-action of her back-swing. Beyond this, I can say little. But she must have been attractive, for there can be ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... dry or with plenty of gravy. In the latter case, serve with rice or kidgeri (No. 49). A teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce is a help to this curry. This curry is very nice and is quickly made. Made dry, a little jar of it taken to a picnic or on a trip will be found very useful, as it keeps for days. Indeed, all curried meats keep longer than meats prepared in other ways. Hamburg steak curry ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... stirring times," he said, "but I have an idea, First Mortgage, that they were merely a Sunday school picnic compared to what ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... strawberry season brings the halcyon days of the year. They look forward to it and enjoy it as a prolonged picnic, in which business and pleasure are equally combined. They are essentially gregarious, and this industry brings many together during the long bright days. The light work leaves their tongues free, and families and neighbors pick together with a ceaseless ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... party, was piloted a half mile west to a small park which Mr. Gerber had developed as a public picnic ground and a source of water for the village. It was well planted with nut trees and it was here that the Gerber family had provided tables and various food delicacies, including fresh milk, peaches and ice cream for everybody. A great part of the work of preparation had been taken care of by ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... a young wife takes the first step to the brink of a precipice. A quadrille, a ballad, a picnic party is sometimes cause sufficient of frightful evils. You are hurried on by the presumptuous voice of vanity and pride, on the faith of a smile, or through giddiness and folly! Shame and misery and remorse are three Furies ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... floor. When the household grew, and she could not leave the children so often, she would sometimes walk with them to Adiabo on the Calabar River, taking provisions with her, and there, halfway, would meet and picnic with the ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... cheerfulness, and a moderate amount of wit and some tact, and Adriance will always be glad to see you coming around the corner. I shared with the rest; shared the smiles and the gallantries and the droll little sermons. It was quite like a Sunday-school picnic; we wore our best clothes and a smile and took our turns. It was his kindness that was hardest. I have pretty well used my life up at ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Belle, rushing out of the second room, which she had inspected in her lightning-like way before greeting her sister, "our room is lovely. You are a gem, an onyx, a fickle wild rose. It's all splendid—a perpetual picnic place, to which we'll bring our own provisions and cook 'em our own way. No boss biddies in this establishment. It's ever so much better than I expected after you once get here; but as the hymn goes, 'How dark and dismal is ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... when I stayed with Camilla one night at Mrs. Francis's didn't I think they were things to pull down to keep the flies off ye'r face. Say, you should have heard Camilla laugh, and ma saw a girl at a picnic once who drank lemonade through her veil, and she et a banana, ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... they want to mix up with us. We can take care of two, and think it a picnic. P'raps even three wouldn't be too much, if so be you want to try it on, Paul Morrison. Huh! there comes another bunch of your sissies. Seven against two might make it too interestin', so we'd better skip out, Scissors. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... week. I didn't want to exhibit it, as it lowers one to do so, and Naudet also opposed it. But what would you have done? I was so begged and prayed; all the young fellows want to set me on the committee, so that I may defend them. Oh! my picture is simple enough—I call it "A Picnic." There are a couple of gentlemen and three ladies under some trees—guests at some chateau, who have brought a collation with them and are eating it in a glade. You'll see, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... not away from home on camping or picnic excursions, she would find time to visit the cabin of an old man who lived alone, and had sore eyes so that he could not see to read. She would read to him whatever he liked, cheer him up by her bright, happy talk, and when she left the old ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... was living in a log house, but was preparing to build a brick house. I renewed my labors on the Hall of the Seventies, and finished it in grand style. It was then dedicated, and the different quorums had picnic parties in it, beginning with the first quorum, consisting of seventy-seven men to each quorum. Brigham said this hall would be a building creditable to London. He called upon me to organize the young men into quorums of Seventy, and keep the records for them. He ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... the sun," Johnny observed apathetically. "Lizards, even, have got sense enough to stay in the shade such weather as this." He rumpled his hair to let the faint breeze in to his scalp, and looked at her. "You're red as a pickled beet at a picnic," he told ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... twelve, and that I and Madame should accompany him; he was going to see the priest who lived near those picturesque grounds, upon business, and as Carmilla had never seen them, she could follow, when she came down, with Mademoiselle, who would bring materials for what you call a picnic, which might be laid for us in the ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... heard from him at Sibley. He is still at the sea-shore, and will not return for a month. Mr. Jerrold says he implored Captain Chester to let him have three days' leave to come down here and have a sail and a picnic with us, and was told that it would be ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... one thing!" said Rebecca, who had come in with a brimming soup plate of milk toast, "Joe Redman gave a picnic last month, and he came here with his mother, in the car, to ask me. And I was the scornfullest thing you ever saw, wasn't ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... for Hire. Boats and Trains met. Picnic and Wedding Parties promptly attended to and executed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... cactus," she said. "May the desert grow enough of them so that we'll never lack one when we want to have a Saturday picnic." ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... be left at that. It is enough; too much. What, in the reconstruction of a life, are, in retrospect, its triumphs but empty shards, drained and discarded, the litter of a picnic party that has fed and ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... Vineyard, Round Lake, Ocean Grove and Sea Cliff will soon mingle psalms and prayers with the voice of surf and forest. Rev. Doctor J.H. Vincent, the silver trumpet of Sabbath-schoolism, is marshaling a meeting for the banks of Chautauqua Lake which will probably be the grandest religious picnic ever held since the five thousand sat down on the grass and had a surplus of provision to take home to those who were too stupid to go. From the arrangement being made for that meeting in August, I judge there will be so much consecrated enthusiasm ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... said Ukridge in a jovial manner, which to me at least seemed out of place, "is to have a regular, jolly picnic-dinner, what? Whack up whatever we have in the larder, and ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... for any pretence. A number were legitimately there, wounded, ill, exhausted, useless on the field of battle; others were malingerers, and some were cowards—cowards for all time, or cowards for this time only. A minority was voluble. "You all think yo' going to a Sunday-school picnic, don't you? Well, you ain't. Just you all wait until you get to the top of the hill! What are you going to see? You're going to see hell's mouth, and the devil wearing blue! We've been there—we've been in hell since daybreak—damned if we haven't! ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... to meet and address the common schools of the county of Norfolk, at a county school picnic held in a grove near Simcoe, the 24th of last June, I determined to proceed thither, not by railroad and stage, as usual, but in a skiff fifteen feet and a half long, in which I had been accustomed for some months to row in Toronto Harbour, between six and eight o'clock ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Alfonso XIII.), which was also an utter failure. I was told that the company had spacious offices established in Manila, whence occasionally the employees went up to the mines, situated near the Caraballo Mountain, as if they were going to a picnic. When they arrived there, all denoted activity—for the feast; but the mining work they did was quite insignificant compared with the squandered funds, hence the disaster ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the village sports have just been held. They took place in a sloping grass field kindly lent for the occasion by Mr. Bates. This means that you paid a shilling to enter the field, whereas on other days you can picnic in it or play cricket in it without paying anything at all. Mr. Bates is a kind of absentee landlord so far as we are concerned, for he is the butcher at Framford, four miles away, and only brings the proceeds of his butchery ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... come round again—that date so fatal to Ida Palliser—and there was much cheerfulness at The Knoll in honour of the occasion. This year the event was not to be signalised by a picnic. They had been picnicking all the summer, and it was felt that the zest of novelty would be wanting to that form of entertainment; so it was decided in family counsel that a friendly dinner at home, with a little impromptu dancing, and perhaps a charade or two afterwards, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... gained as the train got farther away from the smoke and heat of the city. The young men belonged to the "nicer" people, who knew each other in a friendly, well-bred way. It was a comfortable, social kind of picnic ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... man," said the doctor. "Says he came here in '54 and that he has had a picnic ever since. Though he couldn't have had much of a picnic that first winter, when he camped out by the big log; and only a few winters ago Palmer had to send him a quarter ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... catafalques were spread with white table-cloths, flowers, candles, fruit, and biscuits, which the friends and relations (mostly women and children) of the defunct were discussing in anything but a mournful manner. A visit to a departed one's grave is generally an excuse for a picnic in Persia. ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... in the following way. One day, at a picnic, having been led by her into a conversation respecting the relative inferiority of the feminine intellect, I was forced to speak rather more earnestly than usual, when suddenly she turned to me and exclaimed in a ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... condition of the French emigrants at Coblentz during this summer of 1791 is nothing short of a psychological marvel. They regarded the Revolution as a jest, and the flight to the Rhine as a picnic. These beggared aristocrats, male and female, would throw their money away by day among the wondering natives, and gamble among themselves at night. If they ever thought of the future it was only as the ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... an amenity, it is a treasure." His feeling is shared by thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people who live along the Potomac and its tributaries or who go there to float down them in bass time, to picnic and swim, to hunt, to dig into the region's history, or just to listen to the purl of green water against the rough stonework of a ruined bridge pier. Deteriorated though a few stretches may presently be, these ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. "Is this yer a damned picnic?" said Uncle Billy with inward scorn as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... boy, in wild delight. "This is th' koind av a picnic pwhat Oi admire! Come on, ye nagurs! It's Barney Mulloy ye're runnin' up against, an' begobs! he's good fer th' ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... to be regarded as persons. Ditmar did not mention them, but no doubt they existed, along with the cigars and the White Seal champagne, contributing to the amenities. And the excursion, to Janet, took on the complexion of a sort of glorified picnic in the course of which, incidentally, a President of the United States had been chosen. In her innocence she had believed the voters to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... by his having composed a Te Deum on the Peace of Utrecht, which was not favorably regarded by the Protestant princes of Germany. Baron Kilmanseck, a Hanoverian, and a great admirer of Handel, undertook to bring them together again. Being informed that the king intended to picnic on the Thames, he requested the composer to write something for the occasion. Thereupon Handel wrote the twenty-five little concerted pieces known under the title of "Water Music." They were executed in a barge which ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... Throughout the pleasant picnic meal, shared with its group of neighbours, the sight of Andy and Jeff with Cliantha and Pendrilla aggravated a dull pain which dragged always in her heart, and when dinner was over and they had packed the basket once more, and set it in the back of the waggon, she left ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... go to the devil," said the King. "Confound him and his insolence. I'll have him in the prison too, if he interferes. Or Erhaupt can pick a quarrel with him here and fight it out behind the sand-hills before the others get back from their picnic. He has done as much ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... on your merry way," put in Dick Garrett. "This is no picnic excursion you're starting off on. And don't forget your oars, unless you expect to row your ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... a great beech for their picnic-ground. Cellette ordered them to one side, and started to unpack the lunch-basket that had come with Leighton from his hotel. As each item was revealed she cast a sidelong ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... down at a most unexceptionable pair of pantaloons, which had arrived from London only the day before. They were the very things, at least he thought so, for a picnic or fete champetre, but he was not prepared to ride in them. Nor was he more encouraged than had been Mr. Thorne by the idea of being attacked from behind by the bag of flour, which Miss Thorne had graphically ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of the "pull" that he has with the bosses who run the part of the industry that he is in. Unequal wages under socialism would mean a fierce and corrupt scramble for power, office and emolument, beside which the utmost aberrations of Tammany Hall would seem as innocuous as a Sunday School picnic. ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... glass of champagne, which he hurriedly poured out of a small bottle he was carrying into a glass which he produced from a pocket. The trivial action, no less than Dr. Christobal's manner, suggested that they were engaged in some fantastic picnic. The outer horrors were not for them, apparently. They were as secure as sight-seers in the Cave of the Winds, awe-smitten tourists who cling to a rail while mighty Niagara ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... large picnic party. Mr. Charles Brookshank had drawn Mrs. Wimbush's arm through his own, and strolled ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... your holding a religious service at the picnic grounds. They made it a political matter—one party threatened to leave if you did preach, the other threatened to leave if you did not preach. There was quite an excitement about it until it was found that you were gone, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... Endymion, and made no pretence to rival him as a man of affairs. He professed to be known as the student of the family, dabbled in archaeology, and managed two or three local societies and field clubs, which met ostensibly to listen to his papers, but really to picnic. An accident had decided this bent of his —the discovery, during some repairs, of a fine Roman pavement beneath the floor of Bayfield House, At the age of eighteen, during a Cambridge vacation, Narcissus had written and privately printed a description ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... brick. The Ruth Cravens of the world are not traitors," said Kathleen. "And so that is what the governors are doing—horrid, sneaky, disagreeable things! But they are not going to subdue me, so they needn't think it. I tell you what it is, Susy. Why should we put off till next week our picnic to town? Can't ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... "I knew that would get you. Nick seems to be as popular with you as poison ivy at a church picnic." ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... and lighted the fire, I sometimes notice that the bats which live overhead buzz round and then clear out somewhere. I imagine that there's a passage which connects with the open air. Some day, perhaps, an over-earnest policeman will drop on our heads. Then there'll be a picnic, eh?" ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... he will have to undergo hunger and thirst and every kind of hardship? It's not a picnic that I'm going on.' ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... so engrossed looking at the train, no doubt thinking what a picnic they would have with them, that they did not see us until I was almost ready to fire. I was somewhat in advance of the rest, my horse being the fleeter, and when within about a hundred yards I raised in my stirrups, brought my rifle to my ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... their way from Turnhill into Bursley. It was dark; they had missed one train at Turnhill and had preferred not to wait for the next. Although they had been very busy in Hilda's house throughout all the afternoon and a part of the evening, and had eaten only a picnic meal, neither of them was aware of fatigue, and the two miles ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... therefore, and Jerry punted her across to her favourite nook for supper. She thoroughly enjoyed the repast, Jerry's ideas of what a picnic-basket should contain being of ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the children marched straight into the forest with their father as if they were going on a picnic. Pitong dropped his stones one by one. When they reached the woods, their father commanded them to get together what sticks they could find. He left them there, promising that he would meet them in a certain place; but really he hurried ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... know. He was at our house a good deal. Once at a picnic by the lake, at the risk of his own life, he saved sister Millie from drowning, and we all liked to have him here. Perhaps he thought as he had saved one sister, the other ought to help him when he was in trouble. I ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... season was at its height now, clear balmy days and cloudless nights. Their progress was steady for some time, uninterrupted by ill luck of any kind. When they halted for the midday meal it was like a great picnic in the soft warm sunshine, and when evening came the Jayhawkers rollicked around their fires or gathered where one of their number had tuned up his fiddle. William Isham was his name, a great bearded fellow who hailed originally from Rochester, New York; he would sit ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... and more confident of final success every week, when an event came which promised a speedy removal of all difficulty in his path. The school was going to have a picnic. Then and there he would certainly have an introduction to Annie, and after spending a whole day with her, he would accompany her home and win the privilege ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... any case he's had the Mowbrays out in it several times already. One would hardly think he could have found a chance to do so much in such a short time; but our Emperor is a man of action. Yesterday we had a picnic at the Seebachfall, to see Thorwaldsen's Undine. Leopold and Miss Mowbray being splendid climbers, reached the statue on the height over the fall long before the rest of us. At starting, however, I was close behind with the Baroness, and overheard ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... in which the author blends the tragic with the comic, deserve, in this brief analysis, special attention. In the first act, there is a students' picnic at which Olga and Gloukortzev, still full of happiness, are present. The spectator is drawn by personal sympathy to the student Onoufry, a good fellow, always drunk, who makes fun of others and himself. We see him again in the second act, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... than ever the track of the flag, toward the middle of July. The shiny carriages were still rolling about in great numbers when they left; London's air of luxury had thickened with the advancing season and hung heavily in the streets; people had begun to picnic in the Park on Sundays. They had been from the beginning a source of wonder and of depression to Lorne Murchison, the people in the Park, those, I mean, who walked and sat and stood there for the refreshment of their lives, for whom ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... showed an opening in the trees, and a pretty little dell, shaded by silver birches,—a perfect place for a picnic, thought Hildegarde. She would bring Rose here some day, if good Martha would make them another chicken-pie; perhaps Cousin Wealthy would come too. Dear Cousin Wealthy! how good and kind and pretty she was! One would not mind growing old, if one could be ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... our own debt to revolutions. Ruskin could not destroy the market of Raphaelism, but he could and did destroy its monopoly. We may go back to the Renaissance, but let us remember that we go back free. We can picnic now in the ruins of our dungeon and ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... merry picnic of our impromptu luncheon, and after it, when we were dried by the sun, we spent a comfortable lazy two hours lounging ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... Emmentaler, but with small holes. Nutty, sweet dessert or "picnic cheese," as Swiss is ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... evening, partook of their meal in a field. Refreshment in the open air was also usual in the hunting season, when a party were at a distance from home; and the garden arbour was occasionally converted to this kind of purpose, when it had assumed its more modern phase. But our picnic was unknown. ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... have liked to?" queried Jane incredulously. "Then I wish you might have. It was just the sort of a day to walk. I don't s'pose, though, your aunt would have spared you for an all-day picnic." ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... us at least a quarter of an hour, in an intensely hot sun, to climb up a steep hill. The building itself was large, airy, and cool, and there is a good organ and choir, but most of the choristers had gone away to-day to a picnic in the country. During the Litany our attention was suddenly drawn to the fact that earthquakes are matters of frequent occurrence in this country, by a special prayer being offered up for preservation from them and their ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... wore on; the black bosom of the fallow field widened day by day, and the smell of growing wheat filled the dew-laden evening air. The picnic season, the time of athletic competitions, baseball matches, and rural sociability, rolled by, but Harris scarcely knew of its passing. He had long ago ceased to take any personal interest in the frivolities of the neighbourhood; he saw ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... picnic, which the governor afterward commemorated by presenting to each of the gentlemen who accompanied him a golden horseshoe, inscribed with the legend, Sic juvat transcendere montes, Alexander Spotswood ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... the Scots in France, and says that at one railway station he saw two wounded Highlanders "dancing a Scotch reel which made the crowd fairly shriek with admiration." Nothing can subdue these Highlanders' spirits. They go into action, as has already been said, just as if it were a picnic, and here is a picture of life in the trenches at the time of the fierce battle of Mons. It is related by a corporal of the Black Watch. "The Germans," he states, "were just as thick as the Hielan' heather, ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... borders of Chautauqua Lake. The moment one treads that sacred enclosure, one feels one's self in an atmosphere of success. Sobriety and industry, intelligence and goodness, orderliness and ideality, prosperity and cheerfulness, pervade the air. It is a serious and studious picnic on a gigantic scale. Here you have a town of many thousands of inhabitants, beautifully laid out in the forest and drained, and equipped with means for satisfying all the necessary lower and most of the superfluous higher wants of man. You have a first-class college in full blast. ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... Richmond, that commands a view over a wide extent of romantic country. Vantage-points of this type, within easy reach of a fair-sized town, are inclined to be overrated, and, what is far worse, to be spoiled by the litter of picnic parties; but Whitcliffe Scar is free from both objections. In magnificent September weather one may spend many hours in the midst of this great panorama without being disturbed by a single human being, besides ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... them abstractedly. Other boats passed them, crossing the backwater from side to side to avoid each other, for many were now moored, and there were now white dresses and a flaw in the column of air between two trees, round which curled a thread of blue—Lady Miller's picnic party. Still more boats kept coming, and Durrant, without getting up, shoved their ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... somewhere near the hour of one when Molly brought the car gently to a standstill by the roadside, and announced that she would not go a yard further without lunch. The chauffeur successfully took up the part of butler at a moment's notice, busying himself with the baskets, spreading a picnic cloth under a shady tree, and putting a bottle of Graves to cool in a neighbouring brook. Meanwhile Molly was doing mysterious things with her chafing-dish and several little china jars. By the time Jack and I had with awkward ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... organized a picnic for the following day, inviting several acquaintances from the hotel; and they all drove to a favourite spot in the forest. Mrs. Madison's maid had charge of many cushions, and disposed her tiny mistress—who looked like a wood fairy in lilac mull—comfortably on a bed of ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... has conferred a like blessing upon us by accepting our invitation. I remember a dear good lady in a small south German town organizing for one winter's day a sleighing party to the woods. A sleighing party differs from a picnic. The people who want each other cannot go off together and lose themselves, leaving the bores to find only each other. You are in close company from early morn till late at night. We were to drive twenty miles, six in a ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... called ourselves the Looking For Trouble Club," groaned Archie. "We haven't had a decent Boat Club picnic since we got into this mess. And look at all this place to clean up to-morrow! I'm about dead with work, already. I don't know ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... was promised that we should see wonders, and should go where no white women had ever been before. At 6.45 on a beautiful morning, with a fresh breeze blowing over the desert, the party set forth, looking forward with delight to a continuous picnic a month long. Soon every vestige of human habitation disappeared, and we were alone in the midst of one of the loneliest lands in the world. Sahara itself, that bugbear of childhood, could not be much more desert than this. Fort Laramie, distant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... fortresses, about 5000 troops available for any operations. One of the European officers told me that the total force remaining out of eighty-two battalions, of which most had come to Crete full, was 17,000 men effective. A party of the consuls and officers of the men-of-war in the port made a picnic at Meskla in August, and witnessed a fight between the Cretans and Zurba and the Turks at Lakus, in the course of watching which I had a shot fired at me from the Turkish trenches, which came so near that the lead of the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman |
