THANKSGIVING

Doubtless many a sportsman has bethought him that his Thanksgiving turkey will have a finer flavor if the feast is prefaced by a few hours in the woods, with dog and gun. Meaner fare than this day of bounty furnishes forth is made delicious by such an appetizer, and the Thanksgiving feast will be none the worse for it.

What can be sweeter than the wholesome fragrance of the fallen leaves? What more invigorating than the breath of the two seasons that we catch: here in the northward shade of a wooded hill the nipping air of winter, there where the southern slope meets the sun the genial warmth of an October day. Here one's footsteps crunch sharply the frozen herbage and the ice-bearded border of a spring's overflow; there splash in thawed pools and rustle softly among the dead leaves.

The flowers are gone, but they were not brighter than the winter berries and bittersweet that glow around one. The deciduous leaves are fallen and withered, but they were not more beautiful than the delicate tracery of their forsaken branches, and the steadfast foliage of the evergreens was never brighter. The song-birds are singing in southern woods, but chickadee, nuthatch, and woodpecker are chatty and companionable and keep the woods in heart with a stir of life.

Then from overhead or underfoot a ruffed grouse booms away into the gray haze of branches, and one hears the whirr and crash of his headlong flight long after he is lost to sight, perchance long after the echo of a futile shot has died away. Far off one hears the intermittent discharge of rifles where the shooters are burning powder for their Thanksgiving turkey, and faintly from far away comes the melancholy music of a hound. Then nearer and clearer, then a rustle of velvet-clad feet, and lo, reynard himself, the wildest spirit of the woods, materializes out of the russet indistinctness and flashes past, with every sense alert. Then the hound goes by, and footstep, voice, and echo sink into silence. For silence it is, though the silver tinkle of the brook is in it, and the stir of the last leaf shivering forsaken on its bough.

In such quietude one may hold heartfelt thanksgiving, feasting full upon a crust and a draught from the icy rivulet, and leave rich viands and costly wines for the thankless surfeiting of poorer men.