We had paid
off all the laborers; and there were left, of that busy
village, only Asaph Langdon and his family, Levi Jordan
and Levi Ross, Horace Leonard and Seth Whitman with
theirs. "Theirs," I say, but Ross had no family. He was
a nice young fellow who was there as Haliburton's
representative, to take care of the accounts and the pay-
roll; Jordan was the head of the brick-kilns; Leonard, of
the carpenters; and Whitman, of the commissariat,--and a
good commissary Whitman was.
We celebrated Thanksgiving together! Ah me! what a
cheerful, pleasant time we had; how happy the children
were together! Polly and I and our bairns were to go to
Boston the next day. I was to spend the winter in one
final effort to get twenty-five thousand dollars more if
I could, with which we might paint the MOON, or put on
some ground felspathic granite dust, in a sort of paste,
which in its hot flight through the air might fuse into
a white enamel. All of us who saw the MOON were so
delighted with its success that we felt sure "the
friends" would not pause about this trifle. The rest of
them were to stay there to watch the winter, and to be
ready to begin work the moment the snow had gone.
Thanksgiving afternoon, how well I remember it,--that
good fellow, Whitman, came and asked Polly and me to
visit his family in their new quarters.
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