The New Picnic

The announcement that a numerou3 and influential association of Chicagoans has decided t.o do lts picnicking on week days this year Is preference to Sundays is probably the beginning ol an important revolution. The city picnic has ever been an institution oí distlnctive and most peculiar features, and if lt began In wholesale larceny and ended in a riot the supposition was that city folk preferred their picnics ;hat way; that they found the undluted picnic as lt obtains In purely rustte communities too dull and uneventful for their palates. As soon as the grand Sunday excursión and picnic s announced, the pickpockets and the strong-arm gentlemen and their frlends make arrangements to lend their sophisticated and enlivening. presence. The entertainment begins with the deft manipulation of the lighter craftsmen at the station and while the train is getting under way. Havlng purloined what valuables are accessible they politely make way, about 12th street, for the heavier operators. Sometimes the latter merely terrorize the passengers for a half licur or so, taking what is handy, and depart. Sometimes they insist on beccmlng a part of the picnic, greatly to the discomfort and detriment of the other parts. Thus through a succesBion of excitlng alarms and aft'rays the day is passed. lt has long been supposed that this was the style of picnic which the urban taste demanded. But if tbere is a movement to have the picnics on week days this supposition may be ill-founded.