Before the company sat down, which was in an order having reference to their supposed tastes and attractions, at a request from the host, an appropriate grace was said by the minister, which happily avoided the extremes of too much brevity on the one hand, and of too great prolixity on the other; or, in other words, it was neither irreverently short, nor impertinently long.

The dinner was of that kind which still graces the hospitable boards of old Connecticut.  At one end of the table a roasted turkey, which had been stuffed a couple of days before, in order that the spices, composing a part of the ingredients, might penetrate and flavor the flesh of the noble bird, turned up his round full breast to the carving-knife; at the other end, another turkey, somewhat smaller, boiled and served with oyster sauce, kept company with her mate, while near the centre, which was occupied by bleached celery in a crystal vase, a mighty ham balanced a chicken pie of equal size.  Besides these principal dishes there were roasted and boiled fowls, and ducks, and tongues, flanked by cranberry and apple sauces, and mashed turnips and potatoes.  On the sideboard (for be it remembered, it was “when this old cap was new,” and a practice which now is considered, at least, questionable, was then held in all honor, and its neglect was never dreamed of, and would have drawn down an imputation of nigardliness and want of breeding) stood bottles of wine, and flagons containing still stronger liquors, together with a large pitcher of delicious cider.  Upon the removal of the first course followed various kinds of puddings, and pies, and custards, and tarts, and sillabubs, and they, in their turn, were succeeded by apples and different sorts of nuts, with raisins and figs, with which the repast was concluded.  Such was an old Thanksgiving dinner.  The present preliminary soup was unusual or unknown.  It was an array capable of supplying the wants of a much larger company, and but a small part could be consumed, but it was the fashion, and it still continues.  They were celebrating the bounty of Providence, and it was meet that the liberality of man should be in harmony with it.  Felix, grave and decorous, as became the importance of the occasion, and his assistant, multiplied themselves into a thousand waiters, sedulous to anticipate the wants of the host and his guests.

The conversation, which at first ran in several distinct rills being confined to each one’s immediate neighborhood mostly, and interrupted by the serious business of dinner, seemed gradually, after a time, to unite its various streams into one common current.  The attention of the doctor was first attracted from an unsuccessful attempt to quote to Mrs. Bernard Shakspeare’s famous recipe for cooking a beef-steak by an observation of Mr. Robinson to Mr. Armstrong, at whose left hand he sat, the seat at the right being occupied by Mrs. Bernard, next to whom sat the doctor.

“The results,” said the minister, “furnish, I fear, little encouragement for the future.  Unless divine grace shall manifest itself in a more signal manner than has heretofore been vouchsafed, they seemed destined to die in their sins.”