with the
same peck. Nobody has yet discovered how many grasshoppers a turkey will
hold; but he is very much like a boy at a Thanksgiving dinner,--he keeps
on eating as long as the supplies last. The gobbler, in one of these
raids, does not condescend to grab a single grasshopper,--at least, not
while anybody is watching him. But I suppose he makes up for it when his
dignity cannot be injured by having spectators of his voracity; perhaps
he falls upon the grasshoppers when they are driven into a corner of the
field. But he is only fattening himself for destruction; like all
greedy persons, he comes to a bad end. And if the turkeys had any
Sunday-school, they would be taught this.

The New England boy used to look forward to Thanksgiving as the great
event of the year. He was apt to get stents set him,--so much corn to
husk, for instance, before that day, so that he could have an extra
play-spell; and in order to gain a day or two, he would work at his
task with the rapidity of half a dozen boys. He always had the day
after Thanksgiving as a holiday, and this was the day he counted on.
Thanksgiving itself was rather an awful festival,--very much like
Sunday, except for the enormous dinner, which filled his imagination
for months before as completely as it did his stomach for that day and
a week after. There was an impression in the house that that dinner
was the most important event since the landing from the Mayflower.
Heliogabalus, who did not resemble a Pilgrim Father at all, but who had
prepared for himself in his day some very sumptuous banquets in Rome,
and ate a great deal of the best he could get (and liked peacocks
stuffed with asafetida, for one thing), never had anything like a
Thanksgiving dinner; for do you suppose that he, or Sardanapalus either,
ever had twenty-four different kinds of pie at one dinner? Therein many
a New England boy is greater than the Roman emperor or the Assyrian
king, and these were among the most luxurious eaters of their day and
generation. But something more is necessary to make good men than
plenty to eat, as Heliogabalus no doubt found when his head was cut off.
Cutting off the head was a mode the people had of expressing disapproval
of their conspicuous men. Nowadays they elect them to a higher office,
or give them a mission to some foreign country, if they do not do well
where they are.

For days and days before Thanksgiving the boy was kept at work evenings,
pounding and pari