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For the rest, all things go on as usual; the miller grinds, the blacksmith strikes and blows, the cobbler and tailor stitch and mend, old men sit in the autumn sun, old gossips stir tea and scandal, revival meetings alternate with apple-bees and bushings, toil, pleasure, family jars, petty neighborhood quarrels, courtship, and marriage, all which make up the daily life of a country village continue as before.

For the rest, all things go on as usual; the miller grinds, the blacksmith strikes and blows, the cobbler and tailor stitch and mend, old men sit in the autumn sun, old gossips stir tea and scandal, revival meetings alternate with apple-bees and bushings, toil, pleasure, family jars, petty neighborhood quarrels, courtship, and marriage, all which make up the daily life of a country village continue as before.

Can they make nothing of our Thanksgiving, that annual gathering of long-severed friends? Do they find nothing to their purpose in our apple-bees, buskings, berry- pickings, summer picnics, and winter sleigh-rides? Is there nothing available in our peculiarities of climate, scenery, customs, and political institutions?

But in our day the jolly little god, though still a heathen in the severe simplicity of his attire, has become modernized in his arts, and invented huskings, apple-bees, sleigh-rides, "drop-ins," gymnastics, and, among his finer snares, the putting on of skates, drawing of patterns, and holding skeins, the last-named having superior advantages over the others, as all will testify who have enjoyed one of those hand-to-hand skirmishes.

Can they make nothing of our Thanksgiving, that annual gathering of long-severed friends? Do they find nothing to their purpose in our apple-bees, buskings, berry- pickings, summer picnics, and winter sleigh-rides? Is there nothing available in our peculiarities of climate, scenery, customs, and political institutions?

As soon as Ned Parker was able to get out of doors again, he was heard of in every house in the village, making himself agreeable after his own fashion, drinking hard cider with the old farmers, praising their wives' gingerbread and spruce-beer, holding skeins for the girls, going on picnics, huckleberryings, fishing-excursions, apple-bees, riding Old Boker, his father's horse, bare-backed down the street, playing ball on the green, and frequenting singing-school with one pretty girl and another, till all Deerfield shook its head and remarked that "That 'ere Ned Parker was a master-hand for carryin' on."

There, too, are huskings, and apple-bees, and quilting parties, and huge old-fashioned fireplaces piled with crackling walnut, flinging its rosy light over happy countenances of youth and scarcely less happy age.

There, too, are huskings, and apple-bees, and quilting parties, and huge old-fashioned fireplaces piled with crackling walnut, flinging its rosy light over happy countenances of youth and scarcely less happy age.

It is necessary to dwell a moment upon this new amusement, because it was not peculiar to Harmony Village, but appears everywhere as naturally as the game parties and croquet which have taken the place of the husking frolics and apple-bees of olden times, and it is impossible to dodge the subject if one attempts to write of boys and girls as they really are nowadays.