with that comfortable feeling one has
when one is moving with the majority
and is wearing one's best clothes.

I sat rigid with expectancy while my
schoolmates spoke their "pieces" and
sang their songs. With frozen faces
they faced each other in dialogues, lost
their quavering voices, and stumbled
down the stairs in their anguish of
spirit. I pitied them, and thought how
lucky it was that my memory never
failed me, and that my voice carried so
well that I could arouse even old Elder
Waite from his slumbers.

Then my turn came. My crimps
were beautiful; the green harps danced
on my freshly-ironed frock, and I had
on my new chain and locket. I relied
upon a sort of mechanism in me to say:
O greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run.

In this seemly manner Whittier's ode
to the pumpkin began. I meant to go
on to verses which I knew would de-
light my audience -- to references to the
"crook-necks" ripening under the Sep-
tember sun; and to Thanksgiving gath-