Meantime, in the kitchen there was a loud rattling of dishes, a beating of eggs, and calling for wood, with which to heat the great brick oven, grandma having pronounced the stove unfit for baking a Thanksgiving dinner. From the cornfield, behind the barn, a golden pumpkin, four times larger than my head and about the same color, was gathered, and after being brought to the house, was pared, cut open, scraped, and sliced into a little tin kettle with a copper bottom, where for hours it stewed and sputtered, filling the atmosphere with a faint, sickly odor, which I think was the main cause of the severe headache I took to bed with me. Mother, on the contrary, differed from me, she associating it in some way with the rapid disappearance of the raisins, cinnamon, sugar, and so forth, which, in sundry brown papers, lay open upon the table. She was generally right when she made up her mind, so I shall not dispute the point, for, let the cause have been what it would, it was a very sick little girl which, the night before Thanksgiving, was put early to bed by Sally, who remarked, as she undressed me, that “I was _slimpsy_ as a rag, and she wouldn’t wonder if I had a _collapse_,” adding, as she tucked the clothes around me, that “if I did, it would be mighty apt to go hard with me.” The next morning, just as the first grey streaks of daylight were appearing in the east, I awoke, finding, to my great joy, that my headache was gone. Rising upon my elbow and leaning far out of bed, I pushed aside the striped curtain which shaded the window, and looking out upon the ground below, saw, to my utter dismay, that it was covered with snow. To me there is nothing pleasant in a snow storm, a snow bank, or a snow cloud; and when a child, I used to think that with the fall of the first flake, there came over my spirits a chill, which was not removed until the spring-time, when, with its cause, it melted away: and even now, when, with my rubber boots, I dare brave any drift, not more than five feet four inches high, I cannot say that I have any particular love for snow; and as from my window I watch the descent of the feathery flakes, I always feel an irresistible desire to make at them wry faces, my favorite method of showing my dislike. On the morning of which I have spoken, I vented my displeasure in the usual way, and then I fell into a deep sleep, from which I was at last awakened by the loud shouts of my brothers, who, in the meadow across the road, were pelting each other with balls, occasionally rolling over in the pure, white snow, which they hailed as an old and well loved friend.