s, c'est la France!_
Remove the turkey, and you undermine Thanksgiving. How could a
conscientious man go to church on Thanksgiving morning, knowing within
himself that he shall return to beef, or mutton, or veal for his dinner,
as on work-days? I tell you, religion would disappear with the turkey.

Toward the close of Thanksgiving, how manifest becomes the influence of
this feathered sovereign. Observe yonder jaundiced youth pacing the
street moodily, his lips set in a cynic sneer. His turkey was lean. I
know it. He cannot hide that turkey. The gaunt fowl obtrudes himself
from every part. On the other hand, none but the primest of prime
turkeys could have set in motion this brisk old gentleman with the ruddy
check and hale, clear eye, whom we next pass. A most stanch and royal
turkey lurks behind that portly front--a sound and fresh animal, with
plenty of cranberries to boot.--What are these soldiers? Carpet-knights
who have united their thanks over a grand regimental banquet. What
frisky gobblers they have shared in, to be sure! They prance and amble
over the pavements as if they had absorbed the very soul of Chanticleer,
and fancied themselves once more princes of the barnyard. The most
singular and freakish of the turkey's manifestations this, by far!

Indeed, on a review of these suggestive facts, we cannot but feel a
marvellous reverence for the potent cock, established as patron of this
feast. This sentiment is wide-spread among our people, and perhaps it is
not too fanciful to predict that it will some day expand itself to a
_cultus_ like that of the Egyptian APIS, or, more properly, the Stork of
Japan. The advanced civilization of the Chinese, indeed, has already
made the Chicken an object of religious veneration. In the slow march of
ages we shall perhaps develop our as yet crude and imperfect religions
into an exalted worship of the Turkey. Then shall the symbolic bird,
trussed as for Thanksgiving, be enshrined in all our temples, and the
multitudes making pilgrimage from afar to such sanctuaries shall be
greeted by an inscription over the temple-gate of BRILLAT SAVARIN'S
axiom:--

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."

* * * * *

BOOTS.

MR. PUNCHINELLO:--Breaking in a young span of boots is ecstasy, or would
be, if fitting bootmakers could be found; but there's the pinch, though
they do give you fits sometimes.

Getting tailored to suit me, the next