uch things may be.

"I was hungry an' sick," Calliope was telling, "for an old-fashion'
Thanksgivin'--or anything that'd smooth life out some. But I says to
myself, 'It looks like God had afflicted us by not givin' us anybody to
do for.' An' then I started out to find some poor an' some sick--an'
each one o' you knows what I found. An' I ask' myself before I got home
that day, 'Why not them an' me?' There's lots o' kinds o' things to do
on Thanksgivin' Day. Are you ever goin' to forgive me?"

I think that we all answered at once. But what we all meant was what
Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss said, as she sat flushed and smiling
behind the coffee-cups:--

"I declare, I feel something like I ain't felt since I don't know when!"

And Calliope nodded at her.

"I guess that's your soul, Mame Bliss," she said. "You can always feel
it if you go to work an' act as if you got one. I'll take my coffee
clear."

V

THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME

The Friendship accommodation reaches the village from the City at six
o'clock at night, and we call the train the Dick Dasher, because Dick
Dasher is its engineer. We "come out on the Dick Dasher" and we "go in
on the Through"; but the Through is a kind of institution, like
marriage, while the Dick Dasher is a thing more intimate, like one's
wedding. It was one winter night on the latter that I hardly heeded what
I overheard.

"The Lord will provide, Delia," Doctor June was saying.

"I ain't sure," came a piping answer, "as they is any Lord. An' don't
you tell anybody 'bout seein' me on this train. I'm goin' on
through--west."

"Thy footfall is a silver thing,
West----west!"

I said over to the beat of the wheels, but the words that I said over
were more insistent than the words that I heard. I was watching the eyes
of a motor-car carrying threads of streaming light, moving near the
track, swifter than the train. It belonged, as I divined, to the
Proudfits of Friendship, and it was carrying Madame Proudfit and her
daughter Clementina, after a day of shopping and visiting in the town.
And when I saw them returning home in this airy fashion,--as if they
were the soul and I in the stuffy Dick Dasher were the body,--I renewed
a certain distaste for them, since in their lives these Proudfits seemed
goblin-like, with no interest in any save their own picturesque
flittings. But while I shrugged at myself for judging them and held
firmly to my own opinion, as o