Many of them were at work in large factories, where it
was the custom of the house to give a roasted turkey and
a pan of cranberry sauce to each person who had been on
the pay-list for three months. One or two of them were
errand men in the market, and it was the practice of the
wholesale dealers there, who at this season become to a
certain extent retailers, to encourage these errand men
by presenting to each of them a turkey, which was
promised in advance. As for Dane himself, the
proprietors of his journal always presented a turkey to
each man on their staff. And in looking forward to his
Thanksgiving at the polls, he had expected to provide a
twenty-two pound gobbler which a friend in Vermont was
keeping for him. It may readily be imagined, then, that,
when the day before Thanksgiving came, he was more
oppressed by an embarrassment of riches than by any
difficulty on the debtor side of his account. He had
twelve people to feed, himself included. There were the
two children, their eight friends, and a young Frenchman
from Paris who, like all persons of that nationality who
are six months in this country, had found many enemies
here. Dane had invited him to dinner. He had arranged
that there should be plates or saucers enough for each
person to have two. And now there was to be a chicken-
pie from Obed Shalom, some mince pies and
Marlborough pies from the Union for Christian Work, a
turkey at each end of the board; and he found he should
have left over, after the largest computation for the
appetites of the visitors, twenty-three pies of different
structure, five dishes of cranberry sauce, three or four
boxes of raisins, two or three drums of figs, two roasted
geese and eleven turkeys.
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