I have a weakness for picnics,
especially in winter, when the mosquitoes cease from troubling
and the ant-hills are at rest; and of all my many favourite
picnic spots this one on the Baltic is the loveliest and best.
As it is a three-hours' drive, the Man of Wrath is loud in his
lamentations when the special sort of weather comes which means,
as experience has taught him, this particular excursion.
There must be deep snow, hard frost, no wind, and a cloudless sky;
and when, on waking up, I see these conditions fulfilled,
then it would need some very potent reason to keep me from
having out a sleigh and going off. It is, I admit, a hard day
for the horses; but why have horses if they are not to take
you where you want to go to, and at the time you want to go?
And why should not horses have hard days as well as everybody else?
The Man of Wrath loathes picnics, and has no eye for nature
and frozen seas, and is simply bored by a long drive
through a forest that does not belong to him ; a single
turnip on his own place is more admirable in his eyes than
the tallest, pinkest, straightest pine that ever reared
its snow-crowned head against the setting sunlight.
Now observe the superiority of woman, who sees that both
are good, and after having gazed at the pine and been made
happy by its beauty, goes home and placidly eats the turnip.
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