Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1890 — OLD THANKSGIVING FUN. [ARTICLE]

OLD THANKSGIVING FUN.

Dr. Talmage Recalls a Thanksgiving . of His Boyhood. T. Do Witt Talmage, D, D., In Ladles' Home Journal. How my mind is crowded with Thanksgiving memories! On no other day does my memory become such a kaleidoscope, and as I sit here in my darkened room and write, almost every minute the scene changes. * I give to the kaleidoscope of memory a turn, and there they are, natural as life, around the country hearth on a cold winter night. I hear the hickory fire crackle, and see the shadows flit up and down the wall. GamSs 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 offe:ed to make up the hurt, the 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. The mothers and wives came in the afternoon, all wrapped up from the cold, and their feet ou a footstove. When they got warm and took out their needles and 6at down it was a merry group and full of news. Once in a whilo a needle would slip and make a bad scratch upon the character of some absetee, butfor the most part it was good, wholesome talk. And in the evening when the young people came and the old people were in one room and the young in another, in the latter there was some lively stepping, while the black boy played ‘‘Moneymusk” even grandfather in the next room, who had distributed many tracts on the sin of dancing, was seen to make his heel go. It seemed to me a great fuss and a great gathering to get one quite made. But the fact was, that good neighborhood was quilted, warm sympathies were quilted, and connubial bliss was quilted. And they stayed late. And such plays as you had in that back robin when you joined hands, and one of the loveliest stood in the ring! What a circumference to what a centre! But now the scene is fai i lg out. The o’.d fire place 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 villiage. Another went to college and became a minister. Another died the following summer, until now they are ail gonel