ng and cutting up and mixing (not being allowed to
taste much), until the world seemed to him to be made of fragrant
spices, green fruit, raisins, and pastry,--a world that he was only yet
allowed to enjoy through his nose. How filled the house was with the
most delicious smells! The mince-pies that were made! If John had been
shut in solid walls with them piled about him, he could n't have eaten
his way out in four weeks. There were dainties enough cooked in those
two weeks to have made the entire year luscious with good living, if
they had been scattered along in it. But people were probably all the
better for scrimping themselves a little in order to make this a great
feast. And it was not by any means over in a day. There were weeks deep
of chicken-pie and other pastry. The cold buttery was a cave of Aladdin,
and it took a long time to excavate all its riches.

Thanksgiving Day itself was a heavy dav, the hilarity of it being so
subdued by going to meeting, and the universal wearing of the
Sunday clothes, that the boy could n't see it. But if he felt little
exhilaration, he ate a great deal. The next day was the real holiday.
Then were the merry-making parties, and perhaps the skatings and
sleigh-rides, for the freezing weather came before the governor's
proclamation in many parts of New England. The night after Thanksgiving
occurred, perhaps, the first real party that the boy had ever attended,
with live girls in it, dressed so bewitchingly. And there he heard those
philandering songs, and played those sweet games of forfeits, which put
him quite beside himself, and kept him awake that night till the rooster
crowed at the end of his first chicken-nap. What a new world did that
party open to him! I think it likely that he saw there, and probably
did not dare say ten words to, some tall, graceful girl, much older than
himself, who seemed to him like a new order of being. He could see her
face just as plainly in the darkness of his chamber. He wondered if she
noticed how awkward he was, and how short his trousers-legs were. He
blushed as he thought of his rather ill-fitting shoes; and determined,
then and there, that he wouldn't be put off with a ribbon any longer,
but would have a young man's necktie. It was somewhat painful, thinking
the party over, but it was delicious, too. He did not think, probably,
that he would die for that tall, handsome girl; he did not put it
exactly in that way. But he rather resolved to li