"Who's that ?" one would ask, and the other would cry, "That! Why, Dromedary Dodd!" or, with withering scorn, "Not know Mr.Dodd of the Picnics?
Well!" and indeed I think it marked a rather barren destiny; for our picnics, if a trifle vulgar, were as gay and innocent as the age of gold; I am sure no people divert themselves so easily and so well: and even with the cares of my stewardship, I was often happy to be there.
Indeed, there were but two drawbacks in the least considerable.

The first was my terror of the hobbledehoy girls, to whom (from the demands of my situation) I was obliged to lay myself so open.

The other, if less momentous, was more mortifying.

In early days, at my mother's knee, as a man may say, I had acquired the unenviable accomplishment (which I have never since been able to lose) of singing _Just before the Battle._ I have what the French call a fillet of voice, my best notes scarce audible about a dinner-table, and the upper register rather to be regarded as a higher power of silence: experts tell me besides that I sing flat; nor, if I were the best singer in the world, does _Just before the Battle_ occur to my mature taste as the song that I would choose to sing.

In spite of all which considerations, at one picnic, memorably dull, and after I had exhausted every other art of pleasing, I gave, in desperation, my one song.