ll tell you.

They saved their pennies, and bought some corn, and early Thanksgiving
Day, before they had their dinner, they went out into the street near
their home, and scattered corn in a great many places. What for? Why,
for the birds. While they were doing it, John said, "I know, Minnie,
why you thought of the birds: because they do not have any papas and
mammas after they are grown up to get a dinner for them on
Thanksgiving Day." "Yes, that is why," said Minnie.

By and by the birds came and found such a feast, and perhaps they knew
something about Thanksgiving Day and must have sung and chirped
happily all day.

JOHN INGLEFIELD'S THANKSGIVING

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

A sad Thanksgiving story is a rarity indeed. But the one
which follows reminds us that the Puritans, although they
originated our Thanksgiving festival, were after all a
sombre people, seldom free from a realizing sense of the
imminence of sin. Nathaniel Hawthorne, a genuine product of
Puritanism, inherited a full share of his forefathers'
constitutional melancholy and preoccupation with the darker
aspects of life--as this story bears witness.

On the evening of Thanksgiving Day, John Inglefield, the blacksmith,
sat in his elbow-chair among those who had been keeping festival at
his board. Being the central figure of the domestic circle, the fire
threw its strongest light on his massive and sturdy frame, reddening
his rough visage so that it looked like the head of an iron statue,
all aglow, from his own forge, and with its features rudely fashioned
on his own anvil. At John Inglefield's right hand was an empty chair.
The other places round the hearth were filled by the members of the
family, who all sat quietly, while, with a semblance of fantastic
merriment, their shadows danced on the wall behind them. One of the
group was John Inglefield's son, who had been bred at college, and was
now a student of theology at Andover. There was also a daughter of
sixteen, whom nobody could look at without thinking of a rosebud
almost blossomed. The only other person at the fireside was Robert
Moore, formerly an apprentice of the blacksmith, but now his
journeyman, and who seemed more like an own son of John Inglefield
than did the pale and slender student.

Only these four had kept New England's festival beneath that roof. The
vacant chair at John Inglefield's right hand was in memory of his
wife, whom