THE NEW-ENGLAND FESTIVAL.
THERE is no day so dear to New England as Thanksgiving. It is the event of
the year in the home-circle. On that day the family is united, if possible
to come together. The married son with his wife and children are there; the
married daughter with her husband and children are there too; and the respective
grandchildren make it hot for the proud and happy grand-parents, and very
nearly eat them out of house and home, as it were. The unmarried daughter
comes home from school, bringing a companion with her; and the nephews and
nieces are astonished at the magnitude of the bustles and the number of hair-pins
these two bring with them. But the chief object in the home-circle to the
old folks is the unmarried son, the son of their declining years,—the boy-clerk
in New York. He comes home to the old roof-tree young, fresh, and hopeful.
He has not yet developed;
and all the hopes of his parents are centred, founded
as a rock, upon his future. He arrives the evening before, takes a hearty
supper, and goes out to look up a billiard-room. Thanksgiving Day, to be
natural, should come and go with a sunless, leaden sky. The family, having
retired late, rise late. Not much breakfast is eaten in a New-England home.
The meeting of those long separated, the feeling of reverence and gratitude
peculiar to the day's observance, the haste to get to church, and the fact
that a dinner calculated to tax every facility of the stomach will soon be
served, tend to make the breakfast a hasty and imperfect meal. That dinner
is a spectacle. The room is enlivened by suitable decorations. The table
is set out with the best plate and ware. The cooking is simply splendid.
The variety of food is almost unlimited. Every chair is occupied. Every heart
shows its gladness in the beaming face and bright eye. Home again!—home
with the self-sacrificing and generous father,—home with the dear mother's
cooking steaming deliciously in every nostril. Heaven bless her! What an
awful mockery Thanksgiving dinner would be without her! How her eyes shine
as she looks from the well-appointed board to the enjoying ones surrounding
it!—bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh. What fun there is at that
table! How everybody praises the cooking! and how greasy and shiny are the
chubby
faces of the grand-children! They do not understand fully the significance
of the feast; but they are happy in the midst of its vapors and odors, and
intend to have the wish-bone, if they have to smash an own brother or sister
flat with the earth. Ah, happy father! years have come and gone since this
home was founded. And how it has grown! There is moisture in his eye, and
a tremor to his lip, as he looks over the glad faces about him to see—who
of that band so dear to him may be out of gravy or "stuffin'." Ah! it seems
to us that we could knock the stuffing out of any man who could look with
an evil eye upon such a scene.
But the dinner draws to a close, precious as its associations are; and each
guest, with several pounds of food in his or her stomach, held down by a
quarter of mince-pie, withdraws from the table, and carefully fondles his
or her stomach surreptitiously and uneasily. The afternoon wanes apace. The
unmarried daughter shows her married sisters how to do up their back-hair
in the latest style, and tells of the number of pieces of underclothing it
is now necessary to have, with other information too subtle for the masculine
comprehension. The men-folks are off about town, looking at the improvements,
and enjoying memories of the past and the gripes all to themselves.
And then comes the night, and with its deepening shadows the re-united family
are beneath the
old roof-tree. The day is spent; and the morrow will see
them speeding on their different ways,—that morrow, which comes whether
we will or not, when every one returns to his own, leaving behind him the
dear old home and a warmed-up turkey. To-morrow the family must dissolve
into its respective fractions; but they are together now, and no dread of
the morrow shall mar the silent joy. And the night has come. It has been
a day of pleasure, a day of rejoicing, a day of glad memories, a day of praise,
a day of thanksgiving; and as night broods over the home, and one after another
the dear ones awake, and scream for the camphor, and chew nervously at bits
of sweet-flag, they all realize the wonderful significance of the day. Heaven
be merciful to the home that has no Thanksgiving, no glad memories, no camphor,
no sweet-flag!
