Out comes my memorandum book, and I write: “Monday, 1 P.M., meet at Narragansett Avenue, bring _filet de bœuf piqué_,” and with a bow am off in my little wagon, and dash on, to waylay the next cottager, stop every carriage known to contain friends, and ask them, one and all, to join our country party, and assign to each of them the providing of a certain dish and a bottle of champagne. Meeting young men, I charge them to take a bottle of champagne, and a pound of grapes, or order from the confectioner’s a quart of ice cream to be sent to me. My pony is put on its mettle; I keep going the entire day getting recruits; I engage my music and servants, and a carpenter to put down a dancing platform, and the florist to adorn it, and that evening I go over in detail the whole affair, map it out as a general would a battle, omitting nothing, not even a salt spoon; see to it that I have men on the road to direct my party to the farm, and bid the farmer put himself and family, and the whole farm, in holiday attire. On one occasion, as my farmer had just taken unto himself a bride, a young and pretty woman, I found that at mid-day, to receive my guests, she had dressed herself in bridal array; she was _décolleté_, and seemed quite prepared to sing the old ballad of “Coming thro’ the rye”; but as her husband was a stalwart young fellow, and extremely jealous, I advised the young men in the party to confine their attentions to their own little circle and let Priscilla, the Puritan, alone. When I first began giving picnics at my farm, I literally had no stock of my own. I felt that it would never do to have a gathering of the brightest and cleverest people in the country at my place with the pastures empty, neither a cow nor a sheep; so my Yankee wit came to my assistance. I at once hired an entire flock of Southdown sheep, and two yoke of cattle, and several cows from the neighboring farm, for half a day, to be turned into my pasture lots, to give the place an animated look. I well remember some of my knowing guests, being amateur farmers, exclaiming: “Well, it is astonishing! Mc has but fifty acres, and here he is, keeping a splendid flock of Southdowns, two yoke of cattle, to say nothing of his cows!” I would smile and say: “My friend I am not a fancy farmer, like yourself; I farm for profit.”