eek of real preparation, after the
Governor's proclamation had been read.

The glories of that proclamation! We knew beforehand the Sunday it was
to be read, and walked to church with alacrity, filled with gorgeous
and vague expectations.

The cheering anticipation sustained us through what seemed to us the
long waste of the sermon and prayers; and when at last the auspicious
moment approached--when the last quaver of the last hymn had died
out--the whole house rippled with a general movement of complacency,
and a satisfied smile of pleased expectation might be seen gleaming on
the faces of all the young people, like a ray of sunshine through a
garden of flowers.

Thanksgiving now was dawning! We children poked one another, and
fairly giggled with unreproved delight as we listened to the crackle
of the slowly unfolding document. That great sheet of paper impressed
us as something supernatural, by reason of its mighty size and by the
broad seal of the State affixed thereto; and when the minister read
therefrom, "By his Excellency, the Governor of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, a Proclamation," our mirth was with difficulty
repressed by admonitory glances from our sympathetic elders. Then,
after a solemn enumeration of the benefits which the Commonwealth had
that year received at the hands of Divine Providence, came at last the
naming of the eventful day, and, at the end of all, the imposing
heraldic words, "God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." And
then, as the congregation broke up and dispersed, all went their
several ways with schemes of mirth and feasting in their heads.

And now came on the week in earnest. In the very watches of the night
preceding Monday morning a preternatural stir below stairs and the
thunder of the pounding barrel announced that the washing was to be
got out of the way before daylight, so as to give "ample scope and
room enough" for the more pleasing duties of the season.

The making of _pies_ at this period assumed vast proportions that
verged upon the sublime. Pies were made by forties and fifties and
hundreds, and made of everything on the earth and under the earth.

The pie is an English institution, which, planted on American soil,
forthwith ran rampant and burst forth into an untold variety of genera
and species. Not merely the old traditional mince pie, but a thousand
strictly American seedlings from that main stock, evinced the power of
American housewives to adapt old