ferred to
its humble ancestor, the English tart, and it is joyful to be reassured
at a Bowden reunion that invention has not yet failed. Beside a
delightful variety of material, the decorations went beyond all my
former experience; dates and names were wrought in lines of pastry and
frosting on the tops. There was even more elaborate reading matter on an
excellent early-apple pie which we began to share and eat, precept upon
precept. Mrs. Todd helped me generously to the whole word BOWDEN, and
consumed REUNION herself, save an undecipherable fragment; but the most
renowned essay in cookery on the tables was a model of the old Bowden
house made of durable gingerbread, with all the windows and doors in the
right places, and sprigs of genuine lilac set at the front. It must have
been baked in sections, in one of the last of the great brick ovens, and
fastened together on the morning of the day. There was a general sigh
when this fell into ruin at the feast's end, and it was shared by a
great part of the assembly, not without seriousness, and as if it were
a pledge and token of loyalty. I met the maker of the gingerbread house,
which had called up lively remembrances of a childish story. She had the
gleaming eye of an enthusiast and a look of high ideals.

"I could just as well have made it all of frosted cake," she said, "but
'twouldn't have been the right shade; the old house, as you observe, was
never painted, and I concluded that plain gingerbread would represent it
best. It wasn't all I expected it would be," she said sadly, as many an
artist had said before her of his work.

There were speeches by the ministers; and there proved to be a historian
among the Bowdens, who gave some fine anecdotes of the family history;
and then appeared a poetess, whom Mrs. Todd regarded with wistful
compassion and indulgence, and when the long faded garland of verses
came to an appealing end, she turned to me with words of praise.

"Sounded pretty," said the generous listener. "Yes, I thought she did
very well. We went to school together, an' Mary Anna had a very hard
time; trouble was, her mother thought she'd given birth to a genius,
an' Mary Anna's come to believe it herself. There, I don't know what
we should have done without her; there ain't nobody else that can write
poetry between here and 'way up towards Rockland; it adds a great deal
at such a time. When she speaks o' those that are gone, she feels it
all, and so does everyb