old family service, tell the story of content and good cheer better than it can be set down upon paper. How delighted are the children with only the sight of the feast, exchanging smiles and telegraphing sly signals all around the table! How interestedly they watch the carving and disjointing of the fowls, as the white breast-meat falls away in such enticing slices from the sharp blade, and the anatomy of the subject becomes more and more palpable! And the preserves that have been brought forth from their dark hiding-places, plum and pear and currant, — the jelly and sauce, too, how these tickle their youthful tastes even before contact, raising a livelier relish in their im aginations! Hard by, on a sideboard conveniently placed, that is a perfect miracle and puzzle of drawers and doors and out-of-the-way apartments, are arrayed the bountiful rations of pastry and dessert. A large pudding and a smaller one, of custard and plum; together with manifold samples of the pies baked on the day previous, mince, apple, squash, pumpkin, custard, and cranberry, and a very broad platter of tarts to match. The effect of all this side display is nowise lost upon the younger ones in the family party, nor indeed do the good housewives intend it shall pass unobserved of the elder participants of the festival. And there is tea as well, sending up its savory steams from the little side-stand, and waiting to be poured into the quaint little cups that are a genuine part of the homestead furnishing. And thus this high feast of New England goes on. Knives and forks make a brisk clatter, and voices mingle and ring all over the room. All faces are lighted with the joy which all hearts sincerely feel. It is busy work, for a time, what with the eating and talking together; and the poultry carcasses show signs of giving out; while the puddings and pies melt away in turn; and, at last, the table exhibits but the wreck of the fat feast under which it so recently groaned. The children testify to their sense of surfeit by pushing back in their chairs and drawing difficult breaths. The older ones play with their knives or their tumblers, and essay short stories that require no great concentration of the faculties they have nearly put to sleep. Or the thrifty wives compare domestic receipts for this article and that, talking pints and pounds, sugar and juice, water and jars, till the snarl of household learning is hardly to be disentangled. The evening brings its own pleasures again. Then the old-fashioned family games begin, blind-man's-buff, puss-puss in the corner, snapup around the chimney, forfeits, and their many ludistic congeners. The rooms all over the old house are lighted, and the echoes flock merrily up stairs and down. Grandfather has a smoky story in his corner for such as choose to gather round and listen; while Grandmother sits the centre of admiration for all the daughters and daughters-in-law assembled. And they keep it up till late bed-time. It is glee without limit or qualification. The hour is one with two figures, when the embers are buried on the hearth, and the lights are extinguished before the windows, and the crescent moon stoops low and virginal toward the western horizon. But what a flood of happiness has swelled in every heart under the roof! Not a single head is laid upon its pillow, but is filled with dear thoughts of the endless and inexhaustible delights of Home. Not a heart but beats more strongly with genuine love for those simple and homely pleasures which mere wealth can neither give nor take away. Ο 66 HARD WINTERS. LD people love to recount the trials they have passed through, eager to make it appear that the burden of this world's woes are fallen entirely upon themselves. The "last war" was a great deal harder to put up with than any boy's affair of these times; the famous September Gale" has never been approached, for blowing capacity, by any tempest of more modern days; there never was, and never will be, such a depression of the public spirits as during the year of the "embargo;" and old-fashioned Winters have not been paralleled by the dismallest spells of cold weather that have latterly frozen men stiff and stark, at high noon, by the road side. As far as downright hard winters go, it is more than likely they are in the right. Such snow-piles as they used to wallow and dig through, or ride upon when once safely encrusted, we do not chance to stumble into in these days, sure enough. Then they had sleighing four months on a stretch; whereas, if we can get even four weeks of it, the season through, we brag as lustily as if we had been exposed to trials as tough as any that encompassed the oldest inhabitants. Our mercury does sink pretty low, there's no denying it; but these "dreadful cold snaps" are never expected to endure for more than three days, when all the weather prophets assure us the cold has "got to its height," can go not one half degree further if it would, and must of necessity make way forthwith for a relaxing southerly rain. We walk in "slosh" and mud, where our fathers went in whitest snow up to their knees. Frozen ice crunches under our tread, where the old settlers used to make the trodden snowpavement squeal and squeak beneath their sturdy cowhide soles. Round-robin snow is enough to delight the children of this day; whereas their grandparents, at their age, would be out on the bleak country roads, helping the men "break out" with ox teams of a dozen and twenty to a string. In short, this is the millennial day of furnaces and double windows, of salted sidewalks and soft fur collars. In other times, they got warm out of doors, made friends with old Winter by defying him to do |