y faces we carved in the skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!

When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune,
Our chair a broad pumpkin--our lantern the moon,
Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam
In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team!

On all sides this poem was considered very fitting, and I went to the
festival with that comfortable feeling one has when one is moving with
the majority and is wearing one's best clothes.

I sat rigid with expectancy while my schoolmates spoke their "pieces"
and sang their songs. With frozen faces they faced each other in
dialogues, lost their quavering voices, and stumbled down the stairs
in their anguish of spirit. I pitied them, and thought how lucky it was
that my memory never failed me, and that my voice carried so well that I
could arouse even old Elder Waite from his slumbers.

Then my turn came. My crimps were beautiful; the green harps danced on
my freshly-ironed frock, and I had on my new chain and locket. I relied
upon a sort of mechanism in me to say: O greenly and fair in the lands
of the sun, The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run.

In this seemly manner Whittier's ode to the pumpkin began. I meant to
go on to verses which I knew would delight my audience--to references to
the "crook-necks" ripening under the September sun; and to Thanksgiving
gatherings at which all smiled at the reunion of friends and the bounty
of the board.

What moistens the lip and brightens the eye!
What calls back the past like the rich pumpkin pie!

I was sure these lines would meet with approval, and having "come down
to the popular taste," I was prepared to do my best to please.

After a few seconds, when the golden pumpkins that lined the stage had
ceased to dance before my eyes, I thought I ought to begin to "get
hold of my audience." Of course, my memory would be giving me the right
words, and my facile tongue running along reliably, but I wished to
demonstrate that "ability" which was to bring me favour and fame. I
listened to my own words and was shivered into silence. I was talking
about "dark Plutonian shadows"; I was begging "Egypt" to let her arms
enfold me--I was, indeed, in the very thick of the forbidden poem. I
could hear my thin, aspiring voice reaching out over that paralysed
audience with:

Though my scarred and veteran legions
Bear their eagles high n