g east had proved more profitable than going west!

It was a noble dinner! As I regard it from the standpoint of today, with
potatoes six dollars per bushel and turkeys forty cents per pound, it
all seems part of a kindlier world, a vanished world--as it is! There
were squashes and turnips and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie and mince
pie, (made under mother's supervision) and coffee with real cream,--all
the things which are so precious now, and the talk was in praise of the
delicious food and the Exposition which was just closing, and reports of
the crops which were abundant and safely garnered. The wars of the world
were all behind us and the nation on its way back to prosperity--and we
were unafraid.

The gay talk lasted well through the meal, but as mother's pies came on,
Aunt Maria regretfully remarked, "It's a pity Frank can't help eat this
dinner."

"I wish Dave and Mantie were here," put in Deborah.

"And Rachel," added mother.

This brought the note of sadness which is inevitable in such a
gathering, and the shadow deepened as we gathered about the fire a
little later. The dead claimed their places.

Since leaving the valley thirty years before our group had suffered many
losses. All my grandparents were gone. My sisters Harriet and Jessie and
my uncle Richard had fallen on the march. David and Rebecca were
stranded in the foot hills of the Cascade mountains. Rachel, a widow,
was in Georgia. The pioneers of '48 were old and their bright world a
memory.

My father called on mother for some of the old songs. "You and Deb sing
_Nellie Wildwood_," he urged, and to me it was a call to all the absent
ones, an invitation to gather about us in order that the gaps in our
hearth-fire's broken circle might be filled.

Sweet and clear though in diminished volume, my mother's voice rose on
the tender refrain:

Never more to part, Nellie Wildwood
Never more to long for the spring.

and I thought of Hattie and Jessie and tried to believe that they too
were sharing in the comfort and contentment of our fire.

George, who resembled his uncle David, and had much of his skill with
the fiddle bow, had brought his violin with him, but when father asked
Frank to play _Maggie, air ye sleepin'_, he shook his head, saying,
"That's Dave's tune," and his loyalty touched us all.

Quick tears sprang to mother's eyes. She knew all too well that never
again would she hear her best-beloved brother touch the strings or