FullReads

Turkeys, little girl and apple-tree lived in Pennsylvania, a hundred years ago. The turkeys–eleven of them–went to bed in the apple-tree, one night in December.

After it was dark, the little girl stood under the tree and peered up through the boughs and began to count. She numbered them from one up to eleven. Addressing the turkeys, she said: “You’re all up there, I see, and if you only knew enough; if you weren’t the dear, old, wise, stupid things that you are, I’ll tell you what you would do. After I’m gone in the house, and the door is shut, and nobody here to see, you’d get right down, and you’d fly off in a hurry to the deepest part of the wood to spent your Thanksgiving, you would. The cold of the woods isn’t half as bad for you as the fire of the oven will be.”

Becca finished her speech; the turkeys rustled in their feathers and doubtless wondered what it all meant, while she stood thinking. One poor fellow lost his balance and came fluttering down to the ground, just as she had decided what to do. As soon as he was safely reset on his perch, Becca made a second little speech to her audience, in which she declared that “they, the dear turkeys, were her own; that she had a right to do with them just as she pleased, and that it was her good pleasure that not one single one of the eleven should make a part of anybody’s Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Heigh-ho,” whistles Jack, Becca’s ten-year-old brother: “that you, Bec? High time you were in the house.”

“S’pose I frightened you,” said Becca. “Where have you been gone all the afternoon, I’d like to know? stealin’ home too, across lots.”

“I’ll tell, if you won’t let on a mite.”

“Do I ever, Jack?” reproachfully.

He did not deign to answer, but in confidential whispers breathed it into her ears that “he had been down to the Forge. Down to the Valley Forge, where General Washington was going to fetch down lots and lots of soldiers, and build log huts, and stay all Winter.” He ended his breathless narration with an allusion that made Becca jump as though she had seen a snake. He said: “It will be bad for your turkeys.”

“Why, Jack? General Washington won’t steal them.”

“Soldiers eat turkey whenever they can get it; and, Bec, this apple-tree isn’t above three miles from the Forge. You’d better have ’em all killed for Thanksgiving. Come, I’m hungry as a bear.”

“But,” said Becca, grasping his jacket sleeve as they went, “I’ve just promised ’em that they shall not be touched.”

Jack’s laugh set every turkey into motion, until the tree was all in a flutter of excitement. He laughed again and again, before he could say “What a little goose you are! Just as if turkeys understood a word you said.”

“But I understood if they didn’t, and I should be telling my own self a lie. No, not a turkey shall die. They shall all have a real good Thanksgiving once in their lives.”

Two days later, on the 18th of December, Thanksgiving Day came, the turkeys were yet alive, and Becca Blackstone was happy.

The next day General Washington’s eleven thousand men marched into Valley Forge, and went out upon the cold, bleak hillsides, carrying with them almost three thousand poor fellows, too ill to march, too ill to build log huts, ill enough to lie down and die. Such a busy time as there was for days and days. Farmer Blackstone felt a little toryish in his thoughts, but the chance to sell logs and split slabs so near home as Valley Forge was not likely to happen again, and he worked away with strong good will to furnish building material. Jack went every day to the encampment, and grew quite learned in the ways of warlike men.