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Fires flared up brightly, but the picnickers were hushed, as though they knew what was coming. They probably had not seen the ghost, and it was likely few believed they would see anything, but the unknown casts a strong web, and they were feeling its effects.
Thoreau's cabin-life continued for two Summers and Winters. He had proved that two hours' manual work each day was sufficient to keep a man twenty cents a day would suffice. The last year in the woods he had many callers: Agassiz had been to see him, Emerson had often called, Ellery Channing was a frequent visitor, and picnickers were constant.
After a day of delightful enjoyment, the hour arrived for them to return home, and having so much less to pack up than there was at starting, they were soon on the journey homeward. Before the picnickers separated, there was a driving party arranged to go to Rustico Beach, Brackly Point or Cove Head, for another day's outing, and the day was set for the drive.
It had been a perfect afternoon, and a great success, all the picnickers voted, as they parted in the dusk on the gravel-walk in front of Mrs. Gray's door. Yet, after all, there was much to be said for Newport and civilization, and they were not sorry to come back to them.
She had found something depressing in the rococo civilization of Southern California. There was an insufficient appreciation of Mr. Square's Eternal Fitness of Things. The spirit of Los Angeles, for example, was the same as that of the picnic party which, lunching on Ruskin's glacier, leaves its chicken bones and eggshells to offend all subsequent picnickers.
For a few minutes they sat so, looking up into the changing autumn sky, listening to the soft tinkle of the water running below, the dip of an oar, the swirl of a blue heron's wing as it clove the air, the distant voices of the picnickers farther down the creek, the rustle of the yellow beech-leaves as they whispered of the time to go, and how they would drift down like little brown boats to the stream and glide away to the end.
After the picnickers had finished luncheon they still sat about the remains of the feast, talking busily of what they hoped to accomplish during the coming year. Elfreda was full of plans as to what she intended to do when she had finished her course in the law school and passed the bar. "When I'm a full-fledged lawyer " she began. "You mean a lawyeress," corrected Emma. "Don't contradict me.
That picnic lasted the whole afternoon and well into the night, and then the picnickers went home through the starlight, leading the little ones, or carrying them when they were too little or too tired. But first they came down to our van with us, and sang us a serenade after we had disappeared into it, and then left us, and sent their voices back to us out of the dark.
A hundred yards and the limits of the town were passed, scattered chaparral succeeding, and then a noble grove, overflowing the bijou cañon. Through this a small bright stream meandered. Park-like it was, with a kind of cockney ruralness further endorsed by the waste papers and rifled tins of picnickers.
They carried on their indecent, half-tipsy conversations in the midst of nature's loveliness. They looked like a lot of picnickers. Zinaida Grigorievna and Kerbakh, who were in one carriage, were engaged in a malicious conversation. They tore their acquaintances to shreds. She began with Poterin's gloves.
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