He was naturally much interested in the new control of the Republican organ, and it would not be strange if he had taken some active part in its rehabilitation, but I do not know that he had. At any rate, he promptly made the editorial force welcome to his house, where Reed and I were asked to Thanksgiving dinner; Mr. Cooke had not yet brought his family to Columbus. Thanksgiving was not then observed on the present national terms; it was still the peculiar festival of New England, and in our capital its recognition was confined to families of New England origin; our Kentuckians and Virginians and Marylanders kept Christmas, though the custom of New-Year's calls was domesticated among us with people of all derivations, and in due time suffered the lapse which it fell into in its native New York. Our Governor was born in New Hampshire, where his family name was already distinguished in public life; and he kept the Thanksgiving which he had probably not officially invited his fellow-citizens to commemorate. I suppose we had turkey for our dinner, but I am surer of the manner than the make of the feast, for it was served with a formality new to my unworldly experience. The turkey was set before the governor who carved it, and then it was brought to the guests by a shining black butler, instead of being passed from hand to hand among them, as I had always seen it done. That was, in fact, my first dinner in society. The young editors were the only guests; and after dinner the family did not forbid itself the gaieties befitting its young people's years. We had charades, then much affected in society, and I believe the Governor alone was not pressed into helping dramatize the riddle to be finally guessed as Canterbury Bell. I do not remember how the secret was kept to the end, or guessed from the successive parts. My fear and pride were put to a crucial test in the first dissyllable, which the girlish hostess assigned me, and nothing but the raillery glancing through the deep lashes of her brown eyes which were very beautiful, could have brought me to the self-sacrifice involved. I lived through the delight and anguish of that supreme evening, and found myself, as it were, almost immediately afterward in society. It could not have been quite immediately, for when I called at the Governor's soon after New-Year's and he asked me if I had made many New-Year's calls I answered that I had not made any because I knew no one. Then he said I might have called at _his_ house; and I did not fail, on this kind reproach, to go to Miss Chase's next reception, where again she laughed at my supposed dignity in refusing to dance; she would not suppose my inability.