_We often cooked by our fireplace_
One hundred and fifty Thanksgivings must have preceded ours in the old
house, but I think out of them all you could not have picked a better
one. I would not like to say a more bountiful one, for I suppose in the
earlier day they had great wild turkeys and perhaps a haunch of venison,
braces of partridges and other royal fare. Even so, they could hardly
have eaten it all, and I think their noble turkey did not taste any
better than ours. Moreover, we were glad that our deer and partridges
were still running free.
We did not lack of native dishes. Our mince and pumpkin pies were home
products, as well as our apple-butter and a variety of other preserves.
Also, I had discovered a bed of wild cress in the brook and our brown
turkey was garnished with that piquant green. Certainly there was an
old-fashioned feeling about our first New England holiday--something
precious and genuine, that made all effort and cost worth while.
The Pride and the Hope had come home for a week's vacation and were
reveling in the house, which they now for the first time saw in order.
Of course their rooms had to be personally adjusted, their own special
belongings inspected and put away. Their treasures, after two months of
absence, were all new and fresh to them. The Pride, reveling in her own
"cozy corner," or curled up in a big chair by the log fire, reread her
favorite books; the Hope and the Joy played paper-doll "ladies" on the
deep couch, cutting out a whole new generation with up-to-date wardrobes
from the costume pages of some marvelous new fashion magazines.
Oblivious to the grosser world about them, they caused their respective
families to telephone and give parties and visit back and forth, and to
discuss openly their most private affairs and move into new houses and
make improvements and purchases that would have wrecked Rockefeller if
the bills had ever fallen due. That is the glory of make-believe--one
may go as far as he likes, building his castles and his kingdoms, with
never a cent to pay. It is only when one tries to realize in acres and
bricks and shingles that the accounts come in. A spiritistic friend of
mine told me recently that the latest communications from the shadow
world indicate the life there to be purely mental, that each spirit
entity creates its own environment and habitation by thought alone. In
a word, it is a world, he said, where imagination is reality and all the
dreams come true. Ah me! I hope he is not mistaken! What dreams of
empires we have all put away, what air-castles we have seen melt and
vanish because of the cost! A place where one may build and plant and
renew by the processes of thought alone, unchecked by acreage boundaries
or any sordid limitations of ways and means! I cannot think of a better
or more reasonable hereafter than that. We get a glimpse of it here in
the play of children--little children who perhaps have left the truth
not so far behind.
"Fashion ladies" must relax now and then. Even in late November there
were pleasant sunny days when the Hope and the Joy roamed the fields or
laid a long board across a tumbled wall and teetered away vacation hours
to the tune of
Seesaw, Marjory Daw,
Sold her bed and laid on straw,
which was probably first sung a good way back--by Cain and Abel, maybe,
in some corner of Eden. No, it would be outside of Eden, for their
parents had moved, as I remember, before their arrival. And I wonder if
little Cain and Abel had a fire to gather around when the fall evenings
began to close in, before the lamps were lit, and if they ever had cakes
and toast and sandwiches, with hot chocolate, from an old blue china set
from a corner cupboard, and were as hungry as bears, and rocked while
they ate and drank and watched the firelight dance on the tea-things and
table-legs. If not, I am afraid they missed something, and perhaps it is
not to be wondered at that little Cain became gloomy and savage and
outcast when he grew up. A fireplace with a cozy cup of chocolate and a
bite of something filling will civilize children about as quickly as
anything I know of, and would, I am sure, have been good for Cain.
[Illustration]
We often cooked by our fireplace. We hung a kettle over it for tea and
toasted bread on Captain Ben Meeker's long iron toasting-fork. Then at
supper-time we would rake out the coals, and on one of the old
gridirons brought down from the attic would broil a big steak, or some
chops, and if they did not taste better than any other steak or chops we
certainly imagined they did, and I am still inclined to think we were
right. Then there was popcorn, and potatoes roasted in the ashes, and
apples on sticks, though this was likely to be later in the evening,
when the tribe was hungry again, for children in vacation are always
hungry, just little savages, and the best way to civilize them is to
feed them, as I have said. It was too bad they must go back to school,
and sometimes we wished there were never any such things as schools; and
then again, when the house was one wild riot and hurrah, just at a
moment when I wanted to reflect, I could appreciate quite fully the
beauties of education and certain remote places where under careful
direction it could be acquired. But how silent and lonely the house
seemed when the Pride and the Hope were gone! How glad we were that
Christmas was only a month away!