University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
HOW WE KEPT THANKSGIVING AT OLDTOWN.

ON the whole, about this time in our life we were a reasonably
happy set of children. The Thanksgiving festival of
that year is particularly impressed on my mind as a white
day.

Are there any of my readers who do not know what Thanksgiving
day is to a child? Then let them go back with me, and
recall the image of it as we kept it in Oldtown.

People have often supposed, because the Puritans founded
a society where there were no professed public amusements, that
therefore there was no fun going on in the ancient land of
Israel, and that there were no cakes and ale, because they were
virtuous. They were never more mistaken in their lives. There
was an abundance of sober, well-considered merriment; and the
hinges of life were well oiled with that sort of secret humor
which to this day gives the raciness to real Yankee wit. Besides
this, we must remember that life itself is the greatest
possible amusement to people who really believe they can do
much with it, — who have that intense sense of what can be
brought to pass by human effort, that was characteristic of the
New England colonies. To such it is not exactly proper to say
that life is an amusement, but it certainly is an engrossing interest
that takes the place of all amusements.

Looking over the world on a broad scale, do we not find that
public entertainments have very generally been the sops thrown
out by engrossing upper classes to keep lower classes from inquiring
too particularly into their rights, and to make them satisfied
with a stone, when it was not quite convenient to give them
bread? Wherever there is a class that is to be made content to
be plundered of its rights, there is an abundance of fiddling and
dancing, and amusements, public and private, are in great requisition.

It may also be set down, I think, as a general axiom,
that people feel the need of amusements less and less, precisely
in proportion as they have solid reasons for being happy.

Our good Puritan fathers intended to form a state of society
of such equality of conditions, and to make the means of securing
the goods of life so free to all, that everybody should find
abundant employment for his faculties in a prosperous seeking
of his fortunes. Hence, while they forbade theatres, operas,
and dances, they made a state of unparalleled peace and prosperity,
where one could go to sleep at all hours of day or night
with the house door wide open, without bolt or bar, yet without
apprehension of any to molest or make afraid.

There were, however, some few national fêtes: — Election
day, when the Governor took his seat with pomp and rejoicing,
and all the housewives outdid themselves in election cake, and
one or two training days, when all the children were refreshed,
and our military ardor quickened, by the roll of drums, and the
flash of steel bayonets, and marchings and evolutions, — sometimes
ending in that sublimest of military operations, a sham fight, in
which nobody was killed. The Fourth of July took high rank,
after the Declaration of Independence; but the king and high
priest of all festivals was the autumn Thanksgiving.

When the apples were all gathered and the cider was all made,
and the yellow pumpkins were rolled in from many a hill in billows
of gold, and the corn was husked, and the labors of the season were
done, and the warm, late days of Indian Summer came in, dreamy
and calm and still, with just frost enough to crisp the ground of
a morning, but with warm trances of benignant, sunny hours at
noon, there came over the community a sort of genial repose of
spirit, — a sense of something accomplished, and of a new golden
mark made in advance on the calendar of life, — and the deacon
began to say to the minister, of a Sunday, “I suppose it 's about
time for the Thanksgiving proclamation.”

Rural dress-makers about this time were extremely busy in
making up festival garments, for everybody's new dress, if she
was to have one at all, must appear on Thanksgiving day.

Aunt Keziah and Aunt Lois and my mother talked over their

bonnets, and turned them round and round on their hands, and discoursed
sagely of ribbons and linings, and of all the kindred bonnets
that there were in the parish, and how they would probably
appear after Thanksgiving. My grandmother, whose mind
had long ceased to wander on such worldly vanities, was at this
time officiously reminded by her daughters that her bonnet was n't
respectable, or it was announced to her that she must have a
new gown. Such were the distant horizon gleams of the Thanksgiving
festival.

We also felt its approach in all departments of the household,
— the conversation at this time beginning to turn on high and
solemn culinary mysteries and receipts of wondrous power and
virtue. New modes of elaborating squash pies and quince tarts
were now ofttimes carefully discussed at the evening fireside by
Aunt Lois and Aunt Keziah, and notes seriously compared with
the experiences of certain other Aunties of high repute in such
matters. I noticed that on these occasions their voices often fell
into mysterious whispers, and that receipts of especial power and
sanctity were communicated in tones so low as entirely to escape
the vulgar ear. I still remember the solemn shake of the head
with which my Aunt Lois conveyed to Miss Mehitable Rossiter
the critical properties of mace, in relation to its powers of producing
in corn fritters a suggestive resemblance to oysters. As
ours was an oyster-getting district, and as that charming bivalve
was perfectly easy to come at, the interest of such an imitation
can be accounted for only by the fondness of the human mind
for works of art.

For as much as a week beforehand, “we children” were employed
in chopping mince for pies to a most wearisome fineness,
and in pounding cinnamon, allspice, and cloves in a great lignumvitæ
mortar; and the sound of this pounding and chopping reechoed
through all the rafters of the old house with a hearty and
vigorous cheer, most refreshing to our spirits.

In those days there were none of the thousand ameliorations
of the labors of housekeeping which have since arisen, — no
ground and prepared spices and sweet herbs; everything came
into our hands in the rough, and in bulk, and the reducing of it

into a state for use was deemed one of the appropriate labors of
childhood. Even the very salt that we used in cooking was
rock-salt, which we were required to wash and dry and pound
and sift, before it became fit for use.

At other times of the year we sometimes murmured at these
labors, but those that were supposed to usher in the great Thanksgiving
festival were always entered into with enthusiasm. There
were signs of richness all around us, — stoning of raisins, cutting
of citron, slicing of candied orange-peel. Yet all these were
only dawnings and intimations of what was coming during the
week of real preparation, after the Governor's proclamation had
been read.

The glories of that proclamation! We knew beforehand the
Sunday it was to be read, and walked to church with alacrity,
filled with gorgeous and vague expectations.

The cheering anticipation sustained us through what seemed
to us the long waste of the sermon and prayers; and when at
last the auspicious moment approached, — when the last quaver
of the last hymn had died out, — the whole house rippled with
a general movement of complacency, and a satisfied smile of
pleased expectation might be seen gleaming on the faces of
all the young people, like a ray of sunshine through a garden
of flowers.

Thanksgiving now was dawning! We children poked one
another, and fairly giggled with unreproved delight as we listened
to the crackle of the slowly unfolding document. That
great sheet of paper impressed us as something supernatural,
by reason of its mighty size, and by the broad seal of the
State affixed thereto; and when the minister read therefrom,
“By his Excellency, the Governor of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, a Proclamation,” our mirth was with difficulty
repressed by admonitory glances from our sympathetic elders.
Then, after a solemn enumeration of the benefits which the
Commonwealth had that year received at the hands of Divine
Providence, came at last the naming of the eventful day, and,
at the end of all, the imposing heraldic words, “God save the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” And then, as the congregation

broke up and dispersed, all went their several ways with
schemes of mirth and feasting in their heads.

And now came on the week in earnest. In the very watches
of the night preceding Monday morning, a preternatural stir below
stairs, and the thunder of the pounding-barrel, announced
that the washing was to be got out of the way before daylight,
so as to give “ample scope and room enough” for the more
pleasing duties of the season.

The making of pies at this period assumed vast proportions
that verged upon the sublime. Pies were made by forties and
fifties and hundreds, and made of everything on the earth and
under the earth.

The pie is an English institution, which, planted on American
soil, forthwith ran rampant and burst forth into an untold variety
of genera and species. Not merely the old traditional mince
pie, but a thousand strictly American seedlings from that main
stock, evinced the power of American housewives to adapt old
institutions to new uses. Pumpkin pies, cranberry pies, huckleberry
pies, cherry pies, green-currant pies, peach, pear, and plum
pies, custard pies, apple pies, Marlborough-pudding pies, — pies
with top crusts, and pies without, — pies adorned with all sorts
of fanciful flutings and architectural strips laid across and around,
and otherwise varied, attested the boundless fertility of the feminine
mind, when once let loose in a given direction.

Fancy the heat and vigor of the great pan-formation, when
Aunt Lois and Aunt Keziah, and my mother and grandmother, all
in ecstasies of creative inspiration, ran, bustled, and hurried, —
mixing, rolling, tasting, consulting, — alternately setting us children
to work when anything could be made of us, and then chasing
us all out of the kitchen when our misinformed childhood
ventured to take too many liberties with sacred mysteries. Then
out we would all fly at the kitchen door, like sparks from a blacksmith's
window.

On these occasions, as there was a great looseness in the police
department over us children, we usually found a ready refuge at
Miss Mehitable's with Tina, who, confident of the strength of her
position with Polly, invited us into the kitchen, and with the air
of a mistress led us around to view the proceedings there.

A genius for entertaining was one of Tina's principal characteristics;
and she did not fail to make free with raisins, or citron,
or whatever came to hand, in a spirit of hospitality at which
Polly seriously demurred. That worthy woman occasionally felt
the inconvenience of the state of subjugation to which the little
elf had somehow or other reduced her, and sometimes rattled her
chains fiercely, scolding with a vigor which rather alarmed us,
but which Tina minded not a whit. Confident of her own powers,
she would, in the very midst of her wrath, mimic her to her
face with such irresistible drollery as to cause the torrent of reproof
to end in a dissonant laugh, accompanied by a submissive
cry for quarter.

“I declare, Tina Percival,” she said to her one day, “you 're
saucy enough to physic a horn-bug! I never did see the beater
of you! If Miss Mehitable don't keep you in better order, I
don't see what 's to become of any of us!”

“Why, what did become of you before I came?” was the undismayed
reply. “You know, Polly, you and Aunty both were
just as lonesome as you could be till I came here, and you
never had such pleasant times in your life as you 've had since
I 've been here. You 're a couple of old beauties, both of you,
and know just how to get along with me. But come, boys, let 's
take our raisins and go up in the garret and play Thanksgiving.”

In the corner of the great kitchen, during all these days, the
jolly old oven roared and crackled in great volcanic billows of
flame, snapping and gurgling as if the old fellow entered with
joyful sympathy into the frolic of the hour; and then, his great
heart being once warmed up, he brooded over successive generations
of pies and cakes, which went in raw and came out
cooked, till butteries and dressers and shelves and pantries were
literally crowded with a jostling abundance.

A great cold northern chamber, where the sun never shone,
and where in winter the snow sifted in at the window-cracks, and
ice and frost reigned with undisputed sway, was fitted up to be
the storehouse of these surplus treasures. There, frozen solid,
and thus well preserved in their icy fetters, they formed a great
repository for all the winter months; and the pies baked at

Thanksgiving often came out fresh and good with the violets of
April.

During this eventful preparation week, all the female part of
my grandmother's household, as I have before remarked, were at
a height above any ordinary state of mind, — they moved about
the house rapt in a species of prophetic frenzy. It seemed to be
considered a necessary feature of such festivals, that everybody
should be in a hurry, and everything in the house should be turned
bottom upwards with enthusiasm, — so at least we children understood
it, and we certainly did our part to keep the ball rolling.

At this period the constitutional activity of Uncle Fliakim
increased to a degree that might fairly be called preternatural.
Thanksgiving time was the time for errands of mercy and beneficence
through the country; and Uncle Fliakim's immortal old
rubber horse and rattling wagon were on the full jump, in tours of
investigation into everybody's affairs in the region around. On
returning, he would fly through our kitchen like the wind,
leaving open the doors, upsetting whatever came in his way,
— now a pan of milk, and now a basin of mince, — talking rapidly,
and forgetting only the point in every case that gave it
significance, or enabled any one to put it to any sort of use.
When Aunt Lois checked his benevolent effusions by putting
the test questions of practical efficiency, Uncle Fliakim always
remembered that he 'd “forgotten to inquire about that,” and
skipping through the kitchen, and springing into his old wagon,
would rattle off again on a full tilt to correct and amend his investigations.

Moreover, my grandmother's kitchen at this time began to
be haunted by those occasional hangers-on and retainers, of uncertain
fortunes, whom a full experience of her bountiful habits
led to expect something at her hand at this time of the year.
All the poor, loafing tribes, Indian and half-Indian, who at
other times wandered, selling baskets and other light wares, were
sure to come back to Oldtown a little before Thanksgiving time,
and report themselves in my grandmother's kitchen.

The great hogshead of cider in the cellar, which my grandfather
called the Indian Hogshead, was on tap at all hours of the

day; and many a mugful did I draw and dispense to the tribes
that basked in the sunshine at our door.

Aunt Lois never had a hearty conviction of the propriety of
these arrangements; but my grandmother, who had a prodigious
verbal memory, bore down upon her with such strings of quotations
from the Old Testament that she was utterly routed.

“Now,” says my Aunt Lois, “I s'pose we 've got to have Betty
Poganut and Sally Wonsamug, and old Obscue and his wife,
and the whole tribe down, roosting around our doors, till we give
'em something. That 's just mother's way; she always keeps a
whole generation at her heels.”

“How many times must I tell you, Lois, to read your Bible?”
was my grandmother's rejoinder; and loud over the sound of
pounding and chopping in the kitchen could be heard the voice
of her quotations: “If there be among you a poor man in any of
the gates of the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou
shalt not harden thy heart, nor shut thy hand, from thy poor
brother. Thou shalt surely give him; and thy heart shall not be
grieved when thou givest to him, because that for this thing the
Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works; for the poor shall
never cease from out of the land.”

These words seemed to resound like a sort of heraldic proclamation
to call around us all that softly shiftless class, who, for
some reason or other, are never to be found with anything in hand
at the moment that it is wanted.

“There, to be sure,” said Aunt Lois, one day when our preparations
were in full blast, — “there comes Sam Lawson down
the hill, limpsy as ever; now he 'll have his doleful story to
tell, and mother 'll give him one of the turkeys.”

And so, of course, it fell out.

Sam came in with his usual air of plaintive assurance, and
seated himself a contemplative spectator in the chimney-corner,
regardless of the looks and signs of unwelcome on the part of
Aunt Lois.

“Lordy massy, how prosperous everything does seem here!”
he said, in musing tones, over his inevitable mug of cider; “so
different from what 't is t' our house. There 's Hepsy, she 's all

in a stew, an' I 've just been an' got her thirty-seven cents' wuth
o' nutmegs, yet she says she 's sure she don't see how she 's
to keep Thanksgiving, an' she 's down on me about it, just
as ef 't was my fault. Yeh see, last winter our old gobbler got
froze. You know, Mis' Badger, that 'ere cold night we hed last
winter. Wal, I was off with Jake Marshall that night; ye see,
Jake, he hed to take old General Dearborn's corpse into Boston,
to the family vault, and Jake, he kind o' hated to go alone;
't was a drefful cold time, and he ses to me, `Sam, you jes'
go 'long with me'; so I was sort o' sorry for him, and I kind o'
thought I 'd go 'long. Wal, come 'long to Josh Bissel's tahvern,
there at the Half-way House, you know, 't was so swinging cold
we stopped to take a little suthin' warmin', an' we sort o' sot an'
sot over the fire, till, fust we knew, we kind o' got asleep; an'
when we woke up we found we 'd left the old General hitched
up t' th' post pretty much all night. Wal, did n't hurt him none,
poor man; 't was allers a favorite spot o' his'n. But, takin' one
thing with another, I did n't get home till about noon next day,
an', I tell you, Hepsy she was right down on me. She said the
baby was sick, and there had n't been no wood split, nor the barn
fastened up, nor nothin'. Lordy massy, I did n't mean no harm;
I thought there was wood enough, and I thought likely Hepsy 'd
git out an' fasten up the barn. But Hepsy, she was in one o'
her contrary streaks, an' she would n't do a thing; an', when I
went out to look, why, sure 'nuff, there was our old tom-turkey
froze as stiff as a stake, — his claws jist a stickin' right straight
up like this.” Here Sam struck an expressive attitude, and
looked so much like a frozen turkey as to give a pathetic reality
to the picture.

“Well now, Sam, why need you be off on things that 's none
of your business?” said my grandmother. “I 've talked to you
plainly about that a great many times, Sam,” she continued, in
tones of severe admonition. “Hepsy is a hard-working woman,
but she can't be expected to see to everything, and you oughter
'ave been at home that night to fasten up your own barn and
look after your own creeturs.”

Sam took the rebuke all the more meekly as he perceived the

stiff black legs of a turkey poking out from under my grandmother's
apron while she was delivering it. To be exhorted and
told of his shortcomings, and then furnished with a turkey at
Thanksgiving, was a yearly part of his family programme. In
time he departed, not only with the turkey, but with us boys
in procession after him, bearing a mince and a pumpkin pie for
Hepsy's children.

“Poor things!” my grandmother remarked; “they ought to
have something good to eat Thanksgiving day; 't ain't their fault
that they 've got a shiftless father.”

Sam, in his turn, moralized to us children, as we walked beside
him: “A body 'd think that Hepsy 'd learn to trust in Providence,”
he said, “but she don't. She allers has a Thanksgiving
dinner pervided; but that 'ere woman ain't grateful for it, by no
manner o' means. Now she 'll be jest as cross as she can be,
'cause this 'ere ain't our turkey, and these 'ere ain't our pies.
Folks doos lose so much, that hes sech dispositions.”

A multitude of similar dispensations during the course of the
week materially reduced the great pile of chickens and turkeys
which black Cæsar's efforts in slaughtering, picking, and dressing
kept daily supplied.

Besides these offerings to the poor, the handsomest turkey of
the flock was sent, dressed in first-rate style, with Deacon Badger's
dutiful compliments, to the minister; and we children, who
were happy to accompany black Cæsar on this errand, generally
received a seed-cake and a word of acknowledgment from the
minister's lady.

Well, at last, when all the chopping and pounding and baking
and brewing, preparatory to the festival, were gone through with,
the eventful day dawned. All the tribes of the Badger family
were to come back home to the old house, with all the relations
of every degree, to eat the Thanksgiving dinner. And it was
understood that in the evening the minister and his lady would
look in upon us, together with some of the select aristocracy of
Oldtown.

Great as the preparations were for the dinner, everything was
so contrived that not a soul in the house should be kept from the

morning service of Thanksgiving in the church, and from listening
to the Thanksgiving sermon, in which the minister was
expected to express his views freely concerning the politics of
the country, and the state of things in society generally, in a
somewhat more secular vein of thought than was deemed exactly
appropriate to the Lord's day. But it is to be confessed, that,
when the good man got carried away by the enthusiasm of his
subject to extend these exercises beyond a certain length, anxious
glances, exchanged between good wives, sometimes indicated a
weakness of the flesh, having a tender reference to the turkeys
and chickens and chicken pies, which might possibly be over-doing
in the ovens at home. But your old brick oven was a
true Puritan institution, and backed up the devotional habits of
good housewives, by the capital care which he took of whatever
was committed to his capacious bosom. A truly well-bred oven
would have been ashamed of himself all his days, and blushed
redder than his own fires, if a God-fearing house-matron, away
at the temple of the Lord, should come home and find her pie-crust
either burned or underdone by his over or under zeal; so
the old fellow generally managed to bring things out exactly
right.

When sermons and prayers were all over, we children rushed
home to see the great feast of the year spread.

What chitterings and chatterings there were all over the
house, as all the aunties and uncles and cousins came pouring
in, taking off their things, looking at one another's bonnets
and dresses, and mingling their comments on the morning sermon
with various opinions on the new millinery outfits, and with
bits of home news, and kindly neighborhood gossip.

Uncle Bill, whom the Cambridge college authorities released,
as they did all the other youngsters of the land, for Thanksgiving
day, made a breezy stir among them all, especially with
the young cousins of the feminine gender.

The best room on this occasion was thrown wide open, and
its habitual coldness had been warmed by the burning down
of a great stack of hickory logs, which had been heaped up unsparingly
since morning. It takes some hours to get a room warm,

where a family never sits, and which therefore has not in its walls
one particle of the genial vitality which comes from the in-dwelling
of human beings. But on Thanksgiving day, at least, every
year, this marvel was effected in our best room.

Although all servile labor and vain recreation on this day were
by law forbidden, according to the terms of the proclamation, it
was not held to be a violation of the precept, that all the nice old
aunties should bring their knitting-work and sit gently trotting
their needles around the fire; nor that Uncle Bill should start
a full-fledged romp among the girls and children, while the dinner
was being set on the long table in the neighboring kitchen.
Certain of the good elderly female relatives, of serious and discreet
demeanor, assisted at this operation.

But who shall do justice to the dinner, and describe the
turkey, and chickens, and chicken pies, with all that endless
variety of vegetables which the American soil and climate have
contributed to the table, and which, without regard to the French
doctrine of courses, were all piled together in jovial abundance
upon the smoking board? There was much carving and laughing
and talking and eating, and all showed that cheerful ability
to despatch the provisions which was the ruling spirit of the hour.
After the meat came the plum-puddings, and then the endless
array of pies, till human nature was actually bewildered and
overpowered by the tempting variety; and even we children
turned from the profusion offered to us, and wondered what
was the matter that we could eat no more.

When all was over, my grandfather rose at the head of the
table, and a fine venerable picture he made as he stood there,
his silver hair flowing in curls down each side of his clear, calm
face, while, in conformity to the old Puritan custom, he called
their attention to a recital of the mercies of God in his dealings
with their family.

It was a sort of family history, going over and touching upon
the various events which had happened. He spoke of my father's
death, and gave a tribute to his memory; and closed all with
the application of a time-honored text, expressing the hope that
as years passed by we might “so number our days as to apply

our hearts unto wisdom”; and then he gave out that psalm
which in those days might be called the national hymn of the
Puritans.

This we all united in singing to the venerable tune of St. Martin's,
an air which, the reader will perceive, by its multiplicity of
quavers and inflections gave the greatest possible scope to the
cracked and trembling voices of the ancients, who united in it
with even more zeal than the younger part of the community.

Uncle Fliakim Sheril, furbished up in a new crisp black suit,
and with his spindle-shanks trimly incased in the smoothest of
black silk stockings, looking for all the world just like an alert
and spirited black cricket, outdid himself on this occasion in singing
counter, in that high, weird voice that he must have learned
from the wintry winds that usually piped around the corners of
the old house. But any one who looked at him, as he sat with
his eyes closed, beating time with head and hand, and, in short,
with every limb of his body, must have perceived the exquisite
satisfaction which he derived from this mode of expressing
himself. I much regret to be obliged to state that my graceless
Uncle Bill, taking advantage of the fact that the eyes of all his
elders were devotionally closed, stationing himself a little in the
rear of my Uncle Fliakim, performed an exact imitation of his

counter, with such a killing facility that all the younger part
of the audience were nearly dead with suppressed laughter.
Aunt Lois, who never shut her eyes a moment on any occasion,
discerned this from a distant part of the room, and in vain
endeavored to stop it by vigorously shaking her head at the
offender. She might as well have shaken it at a bobolink tilting
on a clover-top. In fact, Uncle Bill was Aunt Lois's weak
point, and the corners of her own mouth were observed to twitch
in such a suspicious manner that the whole moral force of her
admonition was destroyed.

And now, the dinner being cleared away, we youngsters,
already excited to a tumult of laughter, tumbled into the best
room, under the supervision of Uncle Bill, to relieve ourselves
with a game of “blind-man's-buff,” while the elderly women
washed up the dishes and got the house in order, and the men-folks
went out to the barn to look at the cattle, and walked over
the farm and talked of the crops.

In the evening the house was all open and lighted with the best
of tallow candles, which Aunt Lois herself had made with especial
care for this illumination. It was understood that we were to
have a dance, and black Cæsar, full of turkey and pumpkin pie,
and giggling in the very jollity of his heart, had that afternoon
rosined his bow, and tuned his fiddle, and practised jigs and Virginia
reels, in a way that made us children think him a perfect
Orpheus.

As soon as the candles were lighted came in Miss Mehitable
with her brother Jonathan, and Tina, like a gay little tassel,
hanging on her withered arm.

Mr. Jonathan Rossiter was a tall, well-made man, with a clear-cut,
aquiline profile, and high round forehead, from which his
powdered hair was brushed smoothly back and hung down behind
in a long cue. His eyes were of a piercing dark gray, with
that peculiar expression of depth and intensity which marks a
melancholy temperament. He had a large mouth, which he
kept shut with an air of firmness that suggested something even
hard and dictatorial in his nature. He was quick and alert in
all his movements, and his eyes had a searching quickness of

observation, which seemed to lose nothing of what took place
around him. There was an air of breeding and self-command
about him; and in all his involuntary ways he bore the appearance
of a man more interested to make up a judgment of others
than concerned as to what their judgment might be about himself.

Miss Mehitable hung upon his arm with an evident admiration
and pride, which showed that when he came he made summer
at least for her.

After them soon arrived the minister and his lady, — she in a
grand brocade satin dress, open in front to display a petticoat
brocaded with silver flowers. With her well-formed hands shining
out of a shimmer of costly lace, and her feet propped on high-heeled
shoes, Lady Lothrop justified the prestige of good society
which always hung about her. Her lord and master, in the
spotless whiteness of his ruffles on wrist and bosom, and in the
immaculate keeping and neatness of all his clerical black, and
the perfect pose of his grand full-bottomed clerical wig, did honor
to her conjugal cares. They moved through the room like a
royal prince and princess, with an appropriate, gracious, well-considered
word for each and every one. They even returned,
with punctilious civility, the awe-struck obeisance of black
Cæsar, who giggled over straightway with joy and exultation at
the honor.

But conceive of my Aunt Lois's pride of heart, when, following
in the train of these august persons, actually came Ellery
Davenport, bringing upon his arm Miss Deborah Kittery. Here
was a situation! Had the whole island of Great Britain waded
across the Atlantic Ocean to call on Bunker Hill, the circumstance
could scarcely have seemed to her more critical.

“Mercy on us!” she thought to herself, “all these Episcopalians
coming! I do hope mother 'll be careful; I hope she
won't feel it necessary to give them a piece of her mind, as she 's
always doing.”

Miss Deborah Kittery, however, knew her soundings, and
was too genuine an Englishwoman not to know that “every
man's house is his castle,” and that one must respect one's
neighbor's opinions on his own ground.

As to my grandmother, her broad and buxom heart on this
evening was so full of motherliness, that she could have patted
the very King of England on the head, if he had been there,
and comforted his soul with the assurance that she supposed he
meant well, though he did n't exactly know how to manage; so,
although she had a full consciousness that Miss Deborah Kittery
had turned all America over to uncovenanted mercies, she
nevertheless shook her warmly by the hand, and told her she
hoped she 'd make herself at home. And I think she would
have done exactly the same by the Pope of Rome himself, if that
poor heathen sinner had presented himself on Thanksgiving
evening. So vast and billowy was the ocean of her loving-kindness,
and so firmly were her feet planted on the rock of the Cambridge
Platform, that on it she could stand breathing prayers for
all Jews, Turks, Infidels, Tories, Episcopalians, and even Roman
Catholics. The very man that burnt Mr. John Rogers might
have had a mug of cider in the kitchen on this evening, with an
exhortation to go and sin no more.

You may imagine the astounding wassail among the young
people, when two such spirits as Ellery Davenport and my
Uncle Bill were pushing each other on, in one house. My
Uncle Bill related the story of “the Wry-mouth Family,” with
such twists and contortions and killing extremes of the ludicrous
as perfectly overcame even the minister; and he was to
be seen, at one period of the evening, with a face purple with
laughter, and the tears actually rolling down over his well-formed
cheeks, while some of the more excitable young people almost
fell in trances, and rolled on the floor in the extreme of their
merriment. In fact, the assemblage was becoming so tumultuous,
that the scrape of Cæsar's violin, and the forming of sets for
a dance, seemed necessary to restore the peace.

Whenever or wherever it was that the idea of the sinfulness
of dancing arose in New England, I know not; it is a certain
fact that at Oldtown, at this time, the presence of the minister
and his lady was held not to be in the slightest degree incompatible
with this amusement. I appeal to many of my readers,
if they or their parents could not recall a time in New England

when in all the large towns dancing assemblies used to be
statedly held, at which the minister and his lady, though never
uniting in the dance, always gave an approving attendance, and
where all the decorous, respectable old church-members brought
their children, and stayed to watch an amusement in which they
no longer actively partook. No one looked on with a more placid
and patronizing smile than Dr. Lothrop and his lady, as one after
another began joining the exercise, which, commencing first with
the children and young people, crept gradually upwards among
the elders.

Uncle Bill would insist on leading out Aunt Lois, and the
bright color rising to her thin cheeks brought back a fluttering
image of what might have been beauty in some fresh, early
day. Ellery Davenport insisted upon leading forth Miss Deborah
Kittery, notwithstanding her oft-repeated refusals and
earnest protestations to the contrary. As to Uncle Fliakim,
he jumped and frisked and gyrated among the single sisters
and maiden aunts, whirling them into the dance as if he had
been the little black gentleman himself. With that true spirit
of Christian charity which marked all his actions, he invariably
chose out the homeliest and most neglected, and thus worthy
Aunt Keziah, dear old soul, was for a time made quite prominent
by his attentions.

Of course the dances in those days were of a strictly moral
nature. The very thought of one of the round dances of modern
times would have sent Lady Lothrop behind her big fan in
helpless confusion, and exploded my grandmother like a full-charged
arsenal of indignation. As it was, she stood, her broad,
pleased face radiant with satisfaction, as the wave of joyousness
crept up higher and higher round her, till the elders, who
stood keeping time with their heads and feet, began to tell one
another how they had danced with their sweethearts in good
old days gone by, and the elder women began to blush and
bridle, and boast of steps that they could take in their youth,
till the music finally subdued them, and into the dance they
went.

“Well, well!” quoth my grandmother; “they 're all at it so

hearty, I don't see why I should n't try it myself.” And into the
Virginia reel she went, amid screams of laughter from all the
younger members of the company.

But I assure you my grandmother was not a woman to be
laughed at; for whatever she once set on foot, she “put through”
with a sturdy energy befitting a daughter of the Puritans.

“Why should n't I dance?” she said, when she arrived red
and resplendent at the bottom of the set. “Did n't Mr. Despondency
and Miss Muchafraid and Mr. Readytohalt all dance
together in the Pilgrim's Progress?” — and the minister in his
ample flowing wig, and my lady in her stiff brocade, gave to my
grandmother a solemn twinkle of approbation.

As nine o'clock struck, the whole scene dissolved and melted;
for what well-regulated village would think of carrying festivities
beyond that hour?

And so ended our Thanksgiving at Oldtown.