th and fortitude to his
body. He was austere, because austerity was all that he had ever known
or had a chance of knowing; but too often austerity is but the dam that
holds back the flood of potential passion. Not to know the power which
rages behind the barricade is to leave the structure weak for a hapless
day when, carrying all before it, the flood shall break its bonds and in
its fury ruin fair field and smiling mead. It was well for Fred Brent
that the awakening came when it did.

In the first days of June, when examinations are over, the annual
exhibition done, and the graduating class has marched away proud in the
possession of its diplomas, the minds of all concerned turn naturally
towards the old institution, the school picnic. On this occasion parents
join the teachers and pupils for a summer day's outing in the woods.
Great are the preparations for the festal day, and great the rejoicings
thereon. For these few brief hours old men and women lay aside their
cares and their dignity and become boys and girls again. Those who have
known sorrow--and who has not?--take to themselves a day of
forgetfulness. Great baskets are loaded to overflowing with the viands
dear to the picnicker's palate,--sandwiches whose corpulence would make
their sickly brothers of the railway restaurant wither with envy, pies
and pickles, cheese and crackers, cakes and jams galore. Old horses
that, save for this day, know only the market-cart or the Sunday chaise,
are hitched up to bear out the merry loads. Old waggons, whose wheels
have known no other decoration than the mud and clay of rutty roads, are
festooned gaily with cedar wreaths, oak leaves, or the gaudy
tissue-paper rosettes, and creak joyfully on their mission of lightness
and mirth. On foot, by horse, in waggon or cart, the crowds seek some
neighbouring grove, and there the day is given over to laughter, mirth,
and song. The children roll and tumble on the sward in the intoxication
of "swing-turn" and "ring-around-a-rosy." The young women, with many
blushes and shy glances, steal off to quiet nooks with their imploring
swains. Some of the elders, anxious to prove that they have not yet lost
all their youth and agility, indulge, rather awkwardly perhaps, in the
exhausting amusement of the jumping-rope. A few of the more staid walk
apart in conversation with some favourite pastor who does not decline to
take part in the innocent pleasures and crack ponderous jokes for the
edific