But he is only fattening himself for
destruction; like all greedy persons, he comes to a bad end. And if
the turkeys had any Sunday-school, they would be taught this.
The New England boy used to look forward to Thanksgiving as the great
event of the year. He was apt to get stents set him,--so much corn
to husk, for instance, before that day, so that he could have an
extra play-spell; and in order to gain a day or two, he would work at
his task with the rapidity of half a dozen boys. He always had the
day after Thanksgiving as a holiday, and this was the day he counted
on. Thanksgiving itself was rather an awful festival,--very much
like Sunday, except for the enormous dinner, which filled his
imagination for months before as completely as it did his stomach for
that day and a week after. There was an impression in the house that
that dinner was the most important event since the landing from the
Mayflower. Heliogabalus, who did not resemble a Pilgrim Father at
all, but who had prepared for himself in his day some very sumptuous
banquets in Rome, and ate a great deal of the best he could get (and
liked peacocks stuffed with asafetida, for one thing), never had
anything like a Thanksgiving dinner; for do you suppose that he, or
Sardanapalus either, ever had twenty-four different kinds of pie at
one dinner? Therein many a New England boy is greater than the Roman
emperor or the Assyrian king, and these were among the most luxurious
eaters of their day and generation.
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