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Grandfather remembers the
old days. |
Once upon a day, our whole family, mother and father, and my sister Editha, and I, and, Aunt Mollie from Big Hill, and the two hired men; and Uncle Charlie and Aunt Jane, Cousin Meg and Cousin Peg, and Cousin Ned and Cousin Fred from the city, all went to grandmother's for the whole day.
It was November. Once in school we read that a man named Hood wrote about November, and we knew he and his whole family had never been to his grandmother's for a whole wondrous day or he never could have said it.
"No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees. No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds. "November!" And Bryant couldn't have had the things in November we had, or he wouldn't have just groaned, "The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay. And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day." My sister Editha and I never in all our lives saw a gloomy November-
"Wailing winds and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere." The pines and the hemlocks were never naked, nor the evergreen nor the reindeer moss nor the partridge vine, nor the checkerberries. And we thought brown a beautiful color for hair and dresses and roads and caramel candy, so why not for all the meadows, part of the year?
Besides, just think of all the vegetables and berries and big fruits that were in the cellar in jars, all treasured up. The leaves were getting ready for spring, and who would think of missing butterflies and wrens, when there was grandmother's, and Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims to think about? Anyway, mother told us she thought November was pearl gray-like, gray pearls, with a shine all through the month because of Thanksgiving.
"There is harmony in autumn and a lustre in its sky," agreed father. It was always Thanksgiving when we all went to the Big Gray House of the Apple Orchard all at one time. You see, there were too many of us to all go often. There was grandfather, of course, and Rosy, who helped grandmother with the housework, and two little pale-blue-eyed old ladies that smelled of lavender, who used to go to school with grandmother, and always came over for Thanksgiving dinner and all the rest of us.
Grandfather's and grandmother's house was five miles from our house, down the mill road. The stone church was just a little way off. We started very early on Thanksgiving day, because we didn't want to miss anything, and there were heaps of things not to miss.
We bumped along in the democrat wagon over the rutty, frozen road, and we kept getting hungrier and hungrier. It looked like snow. It always looked like snow on Thanksgiving day, but it never did snow. It just kept getting more pearl gray and Thanksgiving-y. Editha and I were glad the apple orchard house had stayed gray.
You could remember better how old it was. We could call ourselves the seventh generation that had lived there, because we had lived there a whole week one summer, and had had the east front room with the canopy top bedstead and the copper-plate spread with the valance, great blue chest with real linen sheets in it, and the ladder back chairs with rush bottoms, and the yellow maple washstand.
Grandmother said there were samples from every generation in every room in the Gray House.
Weren't we glad when we caught the first glimpse of the old apple tree in the front yard, the one we'd had the board swing in that summer! Then, there was grandmother-father's mother, you know -standing in the front doorway, in a brown-sprigged sateen with a white bib apron with funny little curlicues like stencil stamping running round it, her hair in beautiful white waterfalls over her ears, and her cheeks pink like an old daguerreotype picture. And behind her was grandfather, his face as round as an apple, and as merry-grandfather and his silver headed cane. And in another minute there was Rosy, helping carry in the nut-cakes and jellies mother always brought, and the pile of magazines for winter reading, and the very last of our baby chrysanthemums -russet and gold, from our garden.
"Good and early as usual!" chuckled grandfather.
"You'll have to put some bricks on these girls' heads," said grandmother.
"Come right in and take off your things. Lay them on the sofa. Mollie 'll be here anytime now. Jane and Charlie wrote they might be a little late, because they've taken it into their heads to bring some sort of a surprise. Always up to something." "I'm thinking," said grandfather mysteriously,
"the surprise has something to do with Ned.” Ned was our oldest cousin, and most grown up. Ned was in college and knew ever so much. He was very tall and straight and called us little girls, when anybody could see we weren't little at all.
"Smell the turkey," cried Editha.
"Smell the good old cedar fire," cried father. "You girls going to eat so much you'll have to roll on the old woolen carpet this year?"
That reminded Editha and me that we were hungry. We didn't even stop to look in the Chippendale mirror with the gold eagle on top. We didn't even stop to slide off the haircloth sofa, or look up our names in the old family Bible. We ran into the kitchen and whispered to grandmother. Grandmother had a beautiful smile, like, well, like Thanksgiving. She put it on when we whispered. "Raisen cake," she whispered back. "Apple pie sweetened with molasses, brown bread with raisins in it, fried cakes, and brown sugar cookies. Help yourselves, but you can't have another thing till dinner-time."
"There's always the box of hard checkermints in my room on the bureau," chuckled grandfather at her elbow. "And plenty of lemon drops. I'm thinking Rosy'll give you some of the anise sticks her young man brought her. I guess you young folks won't starve." He added, "Want to peek at the pies?"
Did we?
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| Peeking at the pies! |
Sitting in spicy rows on the "buttery" shelves mince and squash and pumpkin, lemon, dried peach and dried apple, cranberry, cream and custard, and dozens more. Plenty of them for the family and plenty for Thanksgiving treats for other folks. Just as Editha and I finished fixing the centre piece, all kinds of vegetables from the cellar piled on a great pewter platter, up the path came Aunt Mollie, arms full of fruit-cake and jams. Up the path came the hired men, arms full of books for the winter reading, and the next minute up the road in the station carriage came Uncle Charlie and Aunt Jane and all the cousins, and boxes of candy, and oranges and white grapes and pink grapes and purple grapes, and the surprise, Ned's surprise.
She was a lovely girl who looked like a big beautiful doll, and she was just as quiet and bashful as one, too, at first. She was all dressed in a garnet dress trimmed with gray fur, and, what do you think, on her ring finger was a gray pearl ring Ned had given her, and in her arms was a box of great puffy hot-house chrysanthemums, yellow and white, for grandmother.
I couldn't help looking at her, every once in a while, all through church time in the little stone church, even while we sang, "We thank Thee, Heavenly Father,” “I praise Thee, Lord, for blessings sent," and "Let The Creator's Praise Arise." Ned's Gray Pearl Girl sang like a lark we used to hear in our very own meadow at home. Uncle Charlie must have told folks about her beautiful voice, because, just before the proclamation, she sang a solo, the one about the Pilgrims, you know-
"Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod!
They have left unstained,
what there they found,—
Freedom to worship God."
The President's proclamation was wonderful. It made you feel so grown-up and so small at the same time. It was about the vintage being ripe, and the harvest heaping, and families being together, and it said something about the "season of mellow fruitfulness." Editha and I wished Mr. Hood and Mr. Bryant could have heard it. People got up and told how thankful they were, too, and somebody called November, "The Sabbath of the year."
Walking back to grandmother's, we were all very quiet, counting things we were glad about, and when we got there, there was grandmother in her best gray dress with the white fichu, and grandfather in his gray suit, with his gold-headed cane, and Rosy, and the two little pale-blue-eyed old ladies that smelled of lavender, and, dinner, waiting for us.
“Thy bounty shines in Autumn un- confined.
And spreads a common feast for all that live.'
Make every day a Thanksgiving Day," said grandfather with bowed head.
We thought about that, while we were taking jellies and jams and pies and cakes and fruit and magazines to folk who, (maybe like Mr. Hood and Mr. Bryant), didn't have beautiful apple orchard houses, and own folks, and a new cousin with a gray pearl ring, singing "The Breaking Waves Dashed High," and the Pilgrims, and so many other things to be thankful for. Oh, you felt as if you were fairly bursting with joy! Myrta Little Davies
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