thly, the present Century Magazine. Mr. Gilder, then
associated with Dr. Holland in editing that newborn periodical,
begged me to write a short story for the second number of the
magazine. I told him that something Helps had written suggested
that a story might be devised in which the hero should marry a
servant. He said it couldn't be done, and I wrote this, on a
wager, as it were. But a "help" is not a servant. The popularity
of this story encouraged me to continue, but I can not now
account for the popularity of the story.

It was in the judge's own mansion on Thirty-fourth Street that I heard
it. It does not matter to the reader how I, a stranger, came to be one
of that family party. Since I could not enjoy the society of my own
family, it was an act of Christian charity that permitted me to share
the joy of others. We had eaten dinner and had adjourned to the warm,
bright parlor. I have noticed on such occasions that conversation is
apt to flag after dinner. Whether it is that digestion absorbs all of
one's vitality, or for some other reason, at least so it generally
falls out, that people may talk ever so brilliantly at the table, but
they will hardly keep it up for the first half-hour afterward. And so
it happened that some of the party fell to looking at the books, and
some to turning the leaves of the photograph album, while others were
using the stereoscope. For my own part, I was staring at an engraving
in a dark corner of the parlor, where I could not have made out much of
its purpose if I had desired, but in reality I was thinking of the
joyous company of my own kith and kin, hundreds of miles away, and
regretting that I could not be with them.

"What are you thinking about, papa?" asked Irene, the judge's second
daughter.

She was a rather haughty-looking girl of sixteen, but, as I had
noticed, very much devoted to her parents. At this moment she was
running her hand through her father's hair, while he was rousing
himself from his revery to answer her question.

"Thinking of the old Thanksgivings, which were so different from
anything we have here. They were the genuine thing; these are only
counterfeits."

"Come, tell us about them, please." This time it was Annie Balcom, the
elder girl, who spoke. And we all gathered round the judge. For I
notice that when conversation does revive, after that period of silence
that follows dinner, it is very attractiv