Thanksgiving! How many reminiscences of the olden time does that word call up, when sons and daughters, they who had wandered far and wide, whose locks, once brown and shining with the sunlight of youth, now give tokens that the autumnal frosts of life are falling slowly upon them, return once more to the old hearth-stone, and, for a brief space, grow young again amid the festive¹ scenes of Thanksgiving Day. To you, who, like me, drew your first breath among the New England hills, and who have strayed away from your early home, in the busy world in which you are now mingling², comes there not occasionally pleasant memories of the olden time, when with eager haste you hied you back to the roof-tree which sheltered your infancy³? And though, perchance, the snows of many a winter may have drifted across the graves of the gray-haired man you called your father, and the mild-eyed woman who bore the blessed name of mother, can you not recall them to mind, as when with tears of joy and words of love, they welcomed their children home, thanking God that as yet not one of their household treasures was missing? And if, after the lapse⁴ of years, there came a time when the youngest of you all was gone, when the childish prattle⁵ you loved so well to hear was hushed, when through the 23house was no more heard the patter of little, busy feet, when there was naught⁶ left of the lost one, save a curl of golden hair, or a tiny shoe, soiled and bent⁷, but looking still so much like him who wore it once, that you preserve it as your choicest treasure: if, I say, there came to you a time like this, do you not remember how, amid all the social cheer, there was still an aching void, which nothing around you could fill?

 

But lest I make this chapter too sad, I shall not speak of our feelings as we missed our baby brother, for they who have lost from their fireside an active, playful child, understand far better than I can describe, the loneliness, the

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