them. See in the falling snow the old cooling and precipitation, and the shooting, radiating forms, that are the architects of planet and globe.

We love the sight of the brown and ruddy earth; it is the color of life, while a snow-covered plain is the face. of death; yet snow is but the mask of the life-giving rain; it, too, is the friend of man-the tender, sculpturesque, immaculate, warming, fertilizing snow.

XXXVII.

THE OLD-TIME THANKSGIVING DAY.

BY DONALD G. MITCHELL.'

I Do not know but it is that old New England holiday of Thanksgiving which, for one of New England: birth, has most of home associations tied up with it, and most of gleeful memories. I know that they are very present ones.

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We all knew when it was coming; we all loved turkey-not Turkey on the map, for which we cared very 15 little after we had once bounded it--by the Black Sea on the east, and by something else on the other sidesbut basted' turkey, brown turkey, stuffed turkey. Here was richness !

We had scored off the days until we were sure, to a 20 recitation mark, when it was due-well into the end. of November, when winds would be blowing from the northwest, with great piles of dry leaves all down the sides of the street and in the angles of pasture walls.

I cannot for my life conceive why any one should up-25 set the old order of things by marking it down a fortnight earlier. A man in the country wants his crops

well in and housed before he is ready to gush out with a round, outspoken Thanksgiving; but everybody knows, who knows anything about it, that the purple-tops and the cow-horn turnips are, nine times in ten, left out till the latter days of November, and husking not half over. · We all knew, as I said, when it was coming. We had a stock of empty flour barrels on Town-hill stuffed with leaves, and a big pole set in the ground, and a battered tar barrel, with its bung chopped out, to put on top of the pole. It was all to beat the last year's bonfire-and 10 it did. The country wagoners had made their little stoppages at the backdoor. We knew what was to come of that. And if the old cook a monstrous fine woman, who weighed two hundred if she weighed a pound-was brusque and wouldn't have us "round," 15 we knew what was to come of that too. Such pies as hers demanded thoughtful consideration: not very large, and baked in scalloped' tins, and with such a relishy flavor to them as, on my honor, I do not recognize in any pies of this generation..

...

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The sermon on that Thanksgiving (and we all heard it) was long. We boys were prepared for that too. But we couldn't treat a Thanksgiving sermon as we would an ordinary one; we couldn't doze-there was too much ahead. It seemed to me that the preacher made rather 25 a merit of holding us in check-with that basted turkey in waiting. At last, though, it came to an end; and I believe Dick and I both joined in the doxology.*

All that followed is to me now a cloud of misty and joyful expectation, until we took our places—a score or 30 more of cousins and kinsfolk; and the turkey, and celery, and cranberries, and what-nots, were all in place.

Did Dick whisper to me as we went in, "Get next to me, old fellow?"

I cannot say; I have a half recollection that he did. But bless me! what did anybody care for what Dick said?

And the old gentleman who bowed his head and said grace there is no forgetting him. And the little golden-haired one who sat at his left-his pet, his idol-who lisped the thanksgiving after him, shall I forget her, and the games of forfeit afterwards at evening that brought her curls near to me?

These fifty years she has been gone from sight, and 10 is dust. What an awful tide of Thanksgivings has drifted by since she bowed her golden locks, and clasped her hands, and murmured, "Our Father, we thank thee for this, and for all thy bounties!"

Who else? Well, troops of cousins-good, bad, and 15 indifferent. No man is accountable for his cousins, I think; or if he is, the law should be changed. If a man can't speak honestly of cousinhood, to the third or fourth degree, what can he speak honestly of? Didn't I see little Floy (who wore pea green silk) make a saucy grim-20 ace when I made a false cut at that rolypoly turkey drumstick and landed it on the tablecloth ?

There was that scamp Tom, too, who loosened his waistcoat before he went into dinner-I saw him do it. Didn't he make faces at me, till he caught a warning 25 from Aunt Polly's uplifted finger.

How should I forget that good, kindly Aunt Pollyvery severe in her turban, and with her meetinghouse face upon her, but full of a great wealth of bonbons and dried fruits on Saturday afternoons, in I know not what 30 capacious pockets; ample, too, in her jokes and in her laugh; making that day a great maelstrom3 of mirth around her?

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H-sells hides now, and is as rich as Croesus, what

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ever that may mean; but does he remember his venturesome foray for a little bit of crisp roast pig that lay temptingly on the edge of the dish that day?

There was Sarah, too-turned of seventeen, education complete, looking down on us all-terribly learned (I s know for a fact that she kept Mrs. Hemans in her pocket); terribly self-asserting, too. If she had not married happily, and not had a little brood about her in afteryears (which she did), I think she would have made one of the most terrible Sorosians' of our time. At least 10 that is the way I think of it now, looking back across the basted turkey (which she ate without gravy), and across the range of eager Thanksgiving faces.

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There was Uncle Ned—no forgetting him—who had a way of patting a boy on the head so that the patting reached clear through to the boy's heart, and made him sure of a blessing hovering over. That was the patting I liked. That's the sort of uncle to come to a Thanksgiving dinner-the sort that eat double filberts with you, and pay up next day by noon with a pocketknife 20 or a riding whip. Hurrah for Uncle Ned!

And Aunt Eliza-is there any keeping her out of mind! I never liked the name much; but the face, and the kindliness which was always ready to cover, as well as she might, what wrong we did, and to make clear what good we did, make me enroll her now-where she belongs evermore-among the saints. So quiet, so gentle, so winning, making conquest of all of us, because she never sought it; full of dignity, yet never asserting it; queening it over all by downright kindliness of 30 heart. What a wife she would have made! Heigho! how we loved her, and made our boyish love of her—a Thanksgiving!

Were there oranges? I think there were, with green

spots on the peel-lately arrived from Florida. Tom boasted that he ate four. I dare say he told the truth— he looked peaked, and was a great deal the worse for the dinner next day, I remember.

Was there punch, or any strong liquors? No; so far recollection now goes, there was none.

as my Champagne?

I have a faint remembrance of a loud pop or two, which set some cousinly curls over opposite me into a nervous shake. Yet I would not like to speak posi-10 tively. Good bottled cider or pop beer may possibly account for all the special phenomena I call to mind.

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Was there coffee, and were there olives? Not to the best of my recollection; or, if present, I lose them in the glamour of mince pies and Marlborough puddings. 15

How we ever sidled away from that board when that feast was done I have no clear conception. I am firm in the belief that thanksgiving was said at the end, as at the beginning. I have a faint recollection of a gray head passing out at the door, and of a fleece of golden 20 curls beside him, against which I jostle-not unkindly. Dark?

Yes; I think the sun had gone down about the time when the mince pies had faded.

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Did Dick and Tom and the rest of us come sauntering 2 in afterwards when the rooms were empty, foraging for any little tidbits of the feast that might be left, the tables showing only wreck under the dim light of a solitary candle, the long range of white cloth stretching athwart the hall like a great skeleton of the feast, lying 30 there in state?

How we found our way with the weight of that stupendous dinner by us to the heights of Town-hill it is hard to tell. But we did, and when our barrel pile was