The house dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet
The mug of cider simmered slow,
And apples sputtered in a row.
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's woods.
What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.
A Winter Evening in Old New England.
THE OLD-FASHIONED THANKSGIVING [20]
I do not know but it is that old New England holiday of Thanksgiving which, for one of New England birth, has most of home associations tied up with it, and most of gleeful memories. I know that they are very present ones.
We all knew when it was coming; we all loved turkey—not Turkey on the map, for which we cared very little after we had once bounded it—by the Black Sea on the east, and by something else on the other sides—but basted turkey, brown turkey, stuffed turkey. Here was richness!
We had scored off the days until we were sure, to a recitation mark, when it was due—well into the end of November, when winds would be blowing from the northwest, with great piles of dry leaves all down the sides of the street and in the angles of pasture walls.
I cannot for my life conceive why any one should upset the old order of things by marking it down a fortnight earlier. A man in the country wants his crops well in and housed before he is ready to gush out with a round, outspoken Thanksgiving; but everybody knows, who knows anything about it, that the purple tops and the cow-horn turnips are, nine times in ten, left out till the latter days of November, and husking not half over.