hat nots, were all in
place.

Did Dick whisper to me as we went in, "Get next to me, old fellow"?

I cannot say; I have a half recollection that he did. But bless me! what
did anybody care for what Dick said?

And the old gentleman who bowed his head and said grace--there is no
forgetting him. And the little golden-haired one who sat at his
left--his pet, his idol--who lisped the thanksgiving after him, shall I
forget her, and the games of forfeit afterwards at evening that brought
her curls near to me?

These fifty years she has been gone from sight, and is dust. What an
awful tide of Thanksgivings has drifted by since she bowed her golden
locks, and clasped her hand, and murmured, "Our Father, we thank thee
for this, and for all thy bounties!"

Who else? Well, troops of cousins--good, bad, and indifferent. No man is
accountable for his cousins, I think; or if he is, the law should be
changed. If a man can't speak honestly of cousinhood, to the third or
fourth degree, what _can_ he speak honestly of? Didn't I see little Floy
(who wore pea-green silk) make a saucy grimace when I made a false cut
at that rolypoly turkey drumstick and landed it on the tablecloth?

There was that scamp Tom, too, who loosened his waistcoat before he went
into dinner. I saw him do it. Didn't he make faces at me, till he caught
a warning from Aunt Polly's uplifted finger?

[Illustration: A Thanksgiving Reunion.]

How should I forget that good, kindly Aunt Polly--very severe in her
turban, and with her meeting-house face upon her, but full of a great
wealth of bonbons and dried fruits on Saturday afternoons, in I know not
what capacious pockets; ample, too, in her jokes and in her laugh;
making that day a great maelstrom of mirth around her?

H---- sells hides now, and is as rich as Croesus, whatever that may
mean; but does he remember his venturesome foray for a little bit of
crisp roast pig that lay temptingly on the edge of the dish that day?

There was Sarah, too,--turned of seventeen, education complete, looking
down on us all--terribly learned (I know for a fact that she kept Mrs.
Hemans in her pocket); terribly self-asserting, too. If she had not
married happily, and not had a little brood about her in after years
(which she did), I think she would have made one of the most terrible
Sorosians of our time. At least that is the way I think of it now,
looking back across the basted turkey (which she ate without gravy) and
acros