短篇小说

It was the day before Thanksgiving. The brief cloudy November afternoon was fast merging into early twilight.

Thanksgiving was impending in the village of Mapleton on the 20th of November, 1825.

At other times of the year we sometimes murmured at these labours, but those that were supposed to usher in the great Thanksgiving festival were always entered into with enthusiasm.

The papa had told the story so often that the children knew just exactly what to expect the moment he began.

The old woman beat fiercely on the cake. She used her hand instead of a spoon, and she held the yellow mixing-bowl poised on her hip under her arm.

ALL through the first summer and the early part of autumn the Pilgrims were busy and happy. They had planted and cared for their first fields of corn.

SUBMIT THOMPSON sat on the stone wall; Sarah Adams, an erect, prim little figure, ankle-deep in dry grass, stood beside it, holding Thankful.

Sixty years ago, up among the New Hampshire hills, lived Farmer Bassett, with a house full of sturdy sons and daughters growing up about him.