y for mint-juleps,
sherry-cobblers, and such awful drinks as New England has put her foot
down against with a stamp that makes inebriating individuals shake in
their boots. But New York won't put her foot down, and the encroachment
upon our patent-right for straws is just winked at.

Dear me, how one thing does lead a person's mind into another! I took up
my pen to write about New Year's Day in New York, and here I am, back in
that old cider-mill behind our orchard, with heaps of red and yellow
apples piled up in the grass, and the old blind horse moving round and
round in the mill-ring, dragging along that great wooden wheel, under
which we could hear the soft-gushing squelch of the apples, while all
the air smelt rich and fruity with them.

Do you remember the luscious juice dropping from the press, and the full
barrels lying about, with the sweetness beginning to yeast through the
bungholes? Then it was we pounced down upon them with our straws, and it
was these straws that brought New Year's Day in New York and the old
cider-mill at home into my mind at once. Thus it is, my sisters, with us
children of genius; thought is born of thought, feeling springs out of
feeling, till creation and re-creation become spontaneosities.

Some people have said of Phoemie Frost that she lacks philosophy and
that transcendental essence which becomes the highest female type in New
England. If any such caviler should reach our Society, have the moral
courage to point out that last paragraph, and see if the wretches have
forgotten to blush for themselves.

Christmas Day isn't anything very particular outside of the Episcopal
Church, in our parts. Somehow the Pilgrim Fathers took a notion against
it when they cut away from the old country, and built square
meeting-houses all over New England. But they set up the same thing
under a new-fangled name. Thanksgiving was just the same to them, and
showed their independence; so they roasted and baked and stewed, and
made pumpkin-pies a specialty--because the cavaliers in England couldn't
get pumkins to compete with them--and went into their meeting-houses to
thank God that they had good crops, instead of going down on their
knees--which they didn't, because of standing up to pray--in solemn
gratitude that the blessed Lord was born upon earth.

Sisters, as a New England female, it would be against nature to say that
the Pilgrim Fathers wasn't right in sinking Christmas in Thanksgiving,
and