who wore it once, that you preserve it as your choicest treasure: if, I say, there came to you a time like this, do you not remember how, amid all the social cheer, there was still an aching void, which nothing around you could fill? But lest I make this chapter too sad, I shall not speak of our feelings as we missed our baby brother, for they who have lost from their fireside an active, playful child, understand far better than I can describe, the loneliness, the longing for something gone, which becomes almost a part of their being, although at times they may seem to forget. Children’s grief is seldom as lasting as that of mature years; and hence it is not strange if I sometimes forgot my sorrow in the joyous anticipation of Thanksgiving Day, which was then to me but another name for plum puddings, chicken pies, meeting dresses, morocco shoes, city cousins, a fire in the parlor, and last, though not least, the privilege of sitting at the first table, and using grandma’s six tiny silver spoons, with the initials of her maiden name, “P. S.” marked upon them. On such occasions my thoughts invariably took a leap backward, and looking at grandma’s wrinkled face and white, shining hair, I would wonder if she ever were young like me; and if, being young, she swung on gates or climbed trees, and walked the great beams, as I did. Then, with another bound, my thoughts would penetrate the future, when I, a dignified grandmother, should recline in my arm-chair, stately and stiff, in my heavy satin and silver gray, while my oldest son, a man just my father’s size, should render me all the homage and respect due to one of my age. By myself, too, I had several times tried on grandma’s clothes, spectacles, cap and all; and then, seated in her chair, with the big Bible in my lap, I had expounded scripture to the imaginary children around me, frequently reprimanding _Rosa_ for her inattention, asking her what “she thought would become of her, if she didn’t stop wriggling so in her chair, and learn ‘the chief end of man.’” Once, in the midst of my performance, grandma herself appeared, and as a natural consequence, I was divested of my fixings in a much shorter space of time than it had taken me to don them. From that day up to the period of my illness, I verily believe grandma looked upon me as “given over to hardness of heart and blindness of mind.”