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Show WHEN OUR UNCLE SAM WHS YOUNG Only Twenty-two Nephews and Nieces at This Thanksgiving. THIS pretty piece of sentiment Is Intended to refer to a dinner given in 1854 by Uncle Sam to his nephews and nieces of that period. Since that time the members of his family have increased slightly. 'TrTTonftT.TiTrt ctaroc fira to rlinp to gether tomorrow. The Invitations have been out for a month. The dinner is given in honor of Connecticut, the oldest 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. "It must be a pleasant sight for her to see the whole family gathered around her 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 (a well-meaning person, per-son, though with a deal of family pride, and very much given to talking about her son 'George,' for which, however, how-ever, nobody can blame her), will have a seat at his right hand. Texas, a rough-and-ready sort of backwoodsman, backwoods-man, has a place at the other end of the table, and will probably contrive to sit very close to Louisiana, one of the youngest and prettiest of the old gentleman's gen-tleman's nieces. "Of course there have been Idle stories 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 couia not afford sugar in their tea. Uncle Sam will chuckle at them well when he pulls out a surplus of 520,000,000 which he proposes to exhibit. Others, again, have privately hinted that Mississippi Mis-sissippi has applied for a divorce, and that she is going to run away with a worthless adventurer. But her presence pres-ence at the dinner, smiling and contented, con-tented, will pretty effectually stop that gossip. Others, again, pretend that there is a deadly quarrel between New-York, New-York, Virginia, Massachusetts, and two or three others. But you will see that they will be shaking hands over the dinner table before sundown. "The old folks will take great pleasure 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 (two old servants of this family who have done more to keep it together than any amount cf compromises could), will light them all up to bed, and supply them with the material for their Thanksgiving dreams." |