This is Thanksgiving Day--a good old festival; and my wife and I have kept it with our hearts, and besides have made good cheer upon our turkey, and pudding, and pies, and custards, although none sat at our board but our two selves. There was a new and livelier sense, I think, that we have at least found a home, and that a new family has been gathered since the last Thanksgiving Day.
There have been many bright, cold days, latterly--so cold that it has required a pretty rapid pace to keep the warm in walking. Day before yesterday, I saw a party of boys skating on a pond of water that has overflowed a neighboring meadow. Running water has not yet frozen. Vegetation has quite come to a stand, except in a few sheltered spots. In a deep ditch, my wife and I found a tall plant of the freshest and healthiest green, which looked as is if it must have grown within the last few weeks. We wander among the wood-paths, which are very pleasant in the sunshine of the afternoons--the trees looking rich and warm, such of them, I mean, as have retained their russet leaves, and where the leaves are strewn along the paths, or heaped plentifully into some hollow of the hills, the effect is not without a charm. To-day, the morning rose with rain, which has since changed to snow and sleet; and now the landscape is a dreary as can well be imagined--white, with the brownness of the soil and withered grass everywhere peeping out. The swollen river, of a leaden hue, drags itself sullenly along; and this may be termed the first winter's day.
From Great Writings by Nathaniel Hawthorne
L. James Morgan Jr (Compiler)
The World Around Us
Published 1971 by Hallmark Editions
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