We celebrated Thanksgiving together! Ah me! what a
cheerful, pleasant time we had; how happy the children
were together! Polly and I and our bairns were to go to
Boston the next day. I was to spend the winter in one
final effort to get twenty-five thousand dollars more if
I could, with which we might paint the MOON, or put on
some ground felspathic granite dust, in a sort of paste,
which in its hot flight through the air might fuse into
a white enamel. All of us who saw the MOON were so
delighted with its success that we felt sure "the
friends" would not pause about this trifle. The rest of
them were to stay there to watch the winter, and to be
ready to begin work the moment the snow had gone.
Thanksgiving afternoon, how well I remember it,--that
good fellow, Whitman, came and asked Polly and me to
visit his family in their new quarters. They had moved
for the winter into cells B and E, so lofty, spacious,
and warm, and so much drier than their log cabins.
Mrs. Whitman, I remember, was very cheerful and
jolly; made my children eat another piece of pie, and
stuffed their pockets with raisins; and then with great
ceremony and fun we christened room B by the name of
Bertha, and E, Ellen, which was Mrs. Whitman's name. And
the next day we bade them all good-by, little thinking
what we said, and with endless promises of what we would
send and bring them in the spring.

Here are the scraps of letters from Orcutt, dear
fellow, which tell what more there is left to tell:--