Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1893 — Thanks Giving [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Thanks Giving

and down the wall. Games that sometimes well-nigh upset the chairs — “Blind-Man's Buff,” “Who’s Got the Button,” “The Popping Corn,” “The Molasses Pudding,” and the witch stories that made the neighbors’ boys afraid to go home after dark. Hickory nuts on one dish, roseate apples on the other. The boisterous plays of “More Bags on the Mill,” “Leap Frog,” “Catcher, ” around and around the room until some one got hurt and a kiss was offered to make up the hurt, tho kiss more resented than the hurt. High old time! Father and mother got up and went into the next room because they could not stand the racket. Then, instead of compunctions of conscience, a worse racket. Tho mothers and wives came in the afternoon, all wrapped up from the cold, and their feet on a footstove. When they got warm and took out their needles and sat down it was a merry group and full of news. Once in a while a needle would slip and make a bad scratch upon the character of some absentee, but for the most part it was good, wholesome tain. , And in tho evening, when the young people came and the old people were in one room and the young people in another, in the latter was some lively stopping, while the black boy jilayed “Moneymusk;” even grandfather in the next room, who had distributed many tracts on tho sin of ’dancing, was seen to make his heel go. It seemed to me a great fuss and a groat gathering to get one quilt made. But the fact was, that good neighborhood was quilted, warm sympathies were quilted, lifetime friendships were quilted, and connubial bliss was quilted. And they stayed late. And such plays as you had in that back room when you joined handSj and one of the loveliest stood in tho ring' What a circumference to what a center! But now the scene is fading out. Tho old fireplace is down, and the house is down with it. One of those boys went to sea and was never heard of. Another became squire in a neighboring village. Another went to college and became a minister. Another died the following summer, until now’they aro all gone.—T. De Witt Talmage, in Ladies’ Home Journal.