, you will see the portraits of more than fifty
of the Fathers of the nation, but the Mothers abide at home.

BECCA BLACKSTONE'S TURKEYS AT VALLEY FORGE.

Turkeys, little girl and apple-tree lived in Pennsylvania, a hundred
years ago. The turkeys--eleven of them--went to bed in the apple-tree,
one night in December.

After it was dark, the little girl stood under the tree and peered up
through the boughs and began to count. She numbered them from one up
to eleven. Addressing the turkeys, she said: "You're all up there, I
see, and if you only knew enough; if you weren't the dear, old, wise,
stupid things that you are, I'll tell you what you would do. After I'm
gone in the house, and the door is shut, and nobody here to see, you'd
get right down, and you'd fly off in a hurry to the deepest part of
the wood to spent your Thanksgiving, you would. The cold of the woods
isn't half as bad for you as the fire of the oven will be."

Becca finished her speech; the turkeys rustled in their feathers and
doubtless wondered what it all meant, while she stood thinking. One
poor fellow lost his balance and came fluttering down to the ground,
just as she had decided what to do. As soon as he was safely reset on
his perch, Becca made a second little speech to her audience, in
which she declared that "they, the dear turkeys, were her own; that
she had a right to do with them just as she pleased, and that it was
her good pleasure that not one single one of the eleven should make a
part of anybody's Thanksgiving dinner."

"Heigh-ho," whistles Jack, Becca's ten-year-old brother: "that you,
Bec? High time you were in the house."

"S'pose I frightened you," said Becca. "Where have you been gone all
the afternoon, I'd like to know? stealin' home too, across lots."

"I'll tell, if you won't let on a mite."

"Do I ever, Jack?" reproachfully.

He did not deign to answer, but in confidential whispers breathed it
into her ears that "he had been down to the Forge. Down to the Valley
Forge, where General Washington was going to fetch down lots and lots
of soldiers, and build log huts, and stay all Winter." He ended his
breathless narration with an allusion that made Becca jump as though
she had seen a snake. He said: "It will be bad for your turkeys."

"Why, Jack? General Washington won't steal them."

"Soldiers eat turkey whenever they can get it; and, Bec, this
apple-tree isn't above three miles from the Forge. You'd better have