artridges and other royal fare. Even so, they could hardly
have eaten it all, and I think their noble turkey did not taste any
better than ours. Moreover, we were glad that our deer and partridges
were still running free.

We did not lack of native dishes. Our mince and pumpkin pies were home
products, as well as our apple-butter and a variety of other preserves.
Also, I had discovered a bed of wild cress in the brook and our brown
turkey was garnished with that piquant green. Certainly there was an
old-fashioned feeling about our first New England holiday--something
precious and genuine, that made all effort and cost worth while.

The Pride and the Hope had come home for a week's vacation and were
reveling in the house, which they now for the first time saw in order.
Of course their rooms had to be personally adjusted, their own special
belongings inspected and put away. Their treasures, after two months of
absence, were all new and fresh to them. The Pride, reveling in her own
"cozy corner," or curled up in a big chair by the log fire, reread her
favorite books; the Hope and the Joy played paper-doll "ladies" on the
deep couch, cutting out a whole new generation with up-to-date wardrobes
from the costume pages of some marvelous new fashion magazines.
Oblivious to the grosser world about them, they caused their respective
families to telephone and give parties and visit back and forth, and to
discuss openly their most private affairs and move into new houses and
make improvements and purchases that would have wrecked Rockefeller if
the bills had ever fallen due. That is the glory of make-believe--one
may go as far as he likes, building his castles and his kingdoms, with
never a cent to pay. It is only when one tries to realize in acres and
bricks and shingles that the accounts come in. A spiritistic friend of
mine told me recently that the latest communications from the shadow
world indicate the life there to be purely mental, that each spirit
entity creates its own environment and habitation by thought alone. In
a word, it is a world, he said, where imagination is reality and all the
dreams come true. Ah me! I hope he is not mistaken! What dreams of
empires we have all put away, what air-castles we have seen melt and
vanish because of the cost! A place where one may build and plant and
renew by the processes of thought alone, unchecked by acreage boundaries
or any sordid limitations of ways and means! I cannot think o