de the
people had of expressing disapproval of their conspicuous men.
Nowadays they elect them to a higher office, or give them a mission
to some foreign country, if they do not do well where they are.

For days and days before Thanksgiving the boy was kept at work
evenings, pounding and paring and cutting up and mixing (not being
allowed to taste much), until the world seemed to him to be made of
fragrant spices, green fruit, raisins, and pastry,--a world that he
was only yet allowed to enjoy through his nose. How filled the house
was with the most delicious smells! The mince-pies that were made!
If John had been shut in solid walls with them piled about him, he
could n't have eaten his way out in four weeks. There were dainties
enough cooked in those two weeks to have made the entire year
luscious with good living, if they had been scattered along in it.
But people were probably all the better for scrimping themselves a
little in order to make this a great feast. And it was not by any
means over in a day. There were weeks deep of chicken-pie and other
pastry. The cold buttery was a cave of Aladdin, and it took a long
time to excavate all its riches.

Thanksgiving Day itself was a heavy dav, the hilarity of it being so
subdued by going to meeting, and the universal wearing of the Sunday
clothes, that the boy could n't see it. But if he felt little
exhilaration, he ate a great deal. The next day was the real
holiday. Then were the merry-making parties, and perhaps the
skatings and sleigh-rides, for the freezing weather came before the
governor's proclamation in many parts of New England. The night
after Thanksgiving occurred, perhaps, the first real party that the
boy had ever attended, with live girls in it, dressed so
bewitchingly. And there he heard those philandering songs, and
played those sweet games of forfeits, which put him quite beside
himself, and kept him awake that night till the rooster crowed at the
end of his first chicken-nap. What a new world did that party open
to him! I think it likely that he saw there, and probably did not
dare say ten words to, some tall, graceful girl, much older than
himself, who seemed to him like a new order of being. He could see
her face just as plainly in the darkness of his chamber. He wondered
if she noticed how awkward he was, and how short his trousers-legs
were. He blushed as he thought of his rather ill-fitting shoes; and
determined, then and there, that he wouldn'