Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1917-11-09

lie lCBtlCNo III tiAS(Oo III LAiAt
period. Since that time the members
of his family have increased slightly.
''T~wenty-two states are to dine to-
gether tomorrow. The invitations have
been out for a month. The dinner is
given in honor of Connecticut. the old
est invited guest, who sits down to
the anniversary feast for the hundred
and fifth time. The table will be three
thousand miles long-so there is sure
to be room. New Hampshire has
agreed to- preside, at the upper end,
in a huge granite chair. The clergy of
the Union will say grace two hours
beforehand. Thirty-six thousand
church bells have been arranged to
chime the music. The viands will be
various to suit all tastes-from ice at
the upper end to wines and fruits at
the lower. But the majority of the
guests will probably make their dinner
of roast turkey and pumpkin pie, out
of compliment to old Connecticut, the
founder of the festival.
sit must be a pleasant sight for her
to see the whole family gathered
around h~er.-table, with Uncle Sam,
about half way down, in the midst of
them. The old fellow Is pretty well
in years now (~seventy-eight last JULY,
but still hale and hearty, thanks to an
excellent constitution. Virginia, his
eldest daughter Ga w~ell-meaning per-
son, though with a deal of family
pride, and very much given to talking
about her son George for which, how
ever, nobody can blame her), will have
a seat at his right hand. Texas, a
rough-and-ready sort of backwoods-
man, has a place at the other end of
the table, and will probably contrive to
sit very close to Louisiana, n of the
youngest and prettiest of the old gen.
tleman's nieces.
"Of course there have been idle sto-
ries In circulation about this family,
as there are about all families, which
this gathering will do much to dispel.
Some, for instance, have asserted that
they were head over ears In debt, and
so near bankrupt that they could not
afford sugar in their tea. Uncle Sam
will chuckle at them well when he
pulls out a surplus of ~$20,00O,0OO
which he proposes to exhibit. Others,
again, have privately limited that Mis-
sissippi has applied for a divorce, and
that she is going to run away with a
worthless adventurer. But her pres
ence at the dinner, smiling and con-
tented, will pretty effectually stop that
gossip. Others, again, pretend that
there is a deadly quarrel between New
York, Virginia, Massachusetts,, and two
or three others. But you will see that
they will be shaking hands ove the
dinner table before shutdown.
"The old folks will take great pleas
ure in talking over the days when they
were young, and all thirteen of them
lived together-down on the seashOre.
The young ones will, of course, be full
of a thousand visionary schemes by
which they think they are going to
make a great noise in the world by
and by. But, at any rate, they will
all be the better for the old tales that
will be told, the old jokes that will be
made, and the old songs that will be
sung, until late in the evening, when
Hope and Memory 1.-TWO old servants
Of this family who have done more to
keep 1t together than any amount of
compromises could), will light them all
up to bed, and supply them with the
material for their Thanksgiving
dreams."