The countryman in a working shirt, who had the control of the wagon, and who had been beguiled by Oliver some five miles out of his road home, (to which he was returning from the market town,) under pretence of a wish to have his opinion of the crops--the poor fellow being withal a hired laborer and never having owned, or entertained the remotest speculation of owning, a rood of ground of his own,--with a commendation from Oliver, delivered with a cheerful smile, that "his observations on timothy were very much to the purpose," drove clattering away again. Mr. Oliver Peabody, farmer, who had come all the way from Ohio to spend thanksgiving with his old father--of a ruddy, youthful and twinkling countenance--who wore his hair at length and unshorn, and the chief peculiarity of whose dress was a grey cloth coat, with a row of great horn-buttons on either breast, with enormous woollen mittens, brought his buxom wife forward under one arm with diligence, drawing his tall youth of a son after him by the other hand--threw himself into the bosom of the Peabody family, and was heartily welcomed all round. He didn't say a word of half-horses and half-alligators, nor of greased lightning, although he was from the West, but he did complain most bitterly of the uncommon smoothness of the roads in these parts, the short grass, and the 'bominable want of elbow-room all over the neighborhood. It was with difficulty he could be kept on the straitened stage of the balcony long enough to answer a few plain questions of children and other matters at home; and immediately expressed an ardent desire to take a look at the garden. "We got somefin' to show thar, Mas'r Oliver," said Mopsey, who had stood by listening, with open mouth and eyes, to the strong statements of the western farmer, "we haint to be beat right-away no how!" Old Sylvester rose with his staff, which he carried more for pleasure than necessity, and led the way. As they approached there was visible through all the plants, shrubs and other growths of the place, whatever they might be--a great yellow sphere or ball, so disposed, on a little slope by itself, as to catch the eye from a distance, shining out in its golden hue from the garden, a sort of rival to the sun himself, rolling overhead. "Dere, what d'ye tink of dat, Oliver," Mopsey asked, forgetting in the grandeur of the moment all distinctions of class or color, "I guess dat's somefin." "That's a pumpkin," said Mr. Oliver Peabody, calmly. "Yes, I guess it is--_de tanksgivin punkin_!"