"Once my grandmother made a party for a circle of cousins. We counted nine cousins in all when we took our seats at the supper-table."
"What did you have for supper?" observed Fred.
"We had nice seed-cookies cut into hearts, diamonds, leaves, and rounds; frosted cup-cakes powdered with pink sugar sand; little sweet biscuits, currant-tarts, dried beef, plum preserves, honey in a great glass dish, and jelly from a blue mug. We poured milk from a great green pitcher into pink china cups, and used grandma's tiny silver tea-spoons for our preserves."
"Wasn't that splendid!" said Ralph. "I wish some one would invite me to such a supper."
"In the evening we drew up before the open fire, and each had a great plateful of nuts, raisins, figs, and candy. Then grandma told us all about when she was a little girl,—what funny dresses she wore, what strange houses people lived in, and how they were furnished; and she remembered a little about the Revolutionary war, and the dark day, and Gen. Washington, and the Indians.
"When grandma grew very old, she came to live with my mother. My uncle in Florida used to send her oranges and other nice fruit; and my pretty aunt Eleanor in New York gave her all her caps and fine muslin neckerchiefs. All her sons and daughters were very thoughtful for her happiness.
"By and by she fell asleep, and there was a funeral at our house one lovely day in early autumn. It did not seem sad or gloomy. We returned from the quiet country graveyard in the twilight of the beautiful day, and gathered in grandma's pleasant room, and talked with tears and smiles of her long and useful life."
"What a good grandmother!" said Ralph, almost tearfully. "I wish I could have seen her just once."
We have had the picture framed, and it hangs in my boys' room now; and often in the early morning, as I linger on the stairs, I hear them tell in a very familiar way all they have learned of Ralph's great-grandmother.
SARAH THAXTER THAYER.