dred. "I'm sure it will be good, too, and we 'll love it."

School closed the day before Thanksgiving, and that afternoon Mildred and Brownie began to be thankful, because there would be no more lessons till Monday. They put their books away, planned the funny little play they were going to have the next evening, and got together everything they would need for that; then they said it was time to think about the supper in the library.

"We will wait till Norah has gone out and the kitchen is all in order," said Mildred. "Then we can get out the things we want to carry into the other room, and put them on two trays; Jack and Cousin Fred can carry them when we are ready. Plates, and knives, and forks, and glasses, and napkins; and the platter of turkey-"

"And salt," said Brownie, "and bread, and butter."

"Yes; and cranberry jelly. Then we will make the hot things and bring them in afterward." "What shall we make to-day, Mildred?" "I wonder if Norah has made the cranberry jelly for dinner yet; if she has n't, you and I might make that now, and divide it and put part away for the supper. And we can make the dessert, or whatever Mother thinks we had better have. The salad we shall have to make to-morrow."

Norah was that very minute preparing to make the cranberry jelly, but she said she was in a hurry, and the girls could make it if they would promise not to get in her way. They got the recipe from their mother, and began in a corner as far off from Norah as they could get.

CRANBERRY JELLY

I quart of cranberries. Pick them over and wash them, then chop them a little.

11⁄2 cups of cold water.

2 cups of sugar.

Boil five minutes; rub while hot through a sieve, and rour into a pretty mold.

This rule, of course, had to be doubled for two molds. They found it was not very easy to get the cranberries through the sieve; by taking turns, however, they were slowly squeezing them through when Norah came to their aid and gave them the wooden potato-masher to use instead of the spoon they were working with. The molds were set away to get hard, and then they asked their mother for something else to do.

"I've been thinking," she said, "that we ought to have for supper something the men would like

Drain the oysters and examine each one carefully to see that it is free from shell; strain and measure the juice; add to it an equal quantity of milk. Butter a deep baking-dish and put in a layer of crumbs, and cover these with a layer of oysters; sprinkle with salt and pepper and dot with butter; put on another layer of crumbs, then one of oysters, season, and so on till the dish is full, with a layer of crumbs on top; cover with small bits of butter; pour on the oyster juice and milk,

and bake about half an hour, or till brown. Serve at once it must not stand.

"Sometimes, instead of baking these in one large dish, I fill little brown baking-dishes in just the same way; only, of course, I do not bake these so long-only ten or fifteen minutes. And sometimes for a lunch party, I get from the fishmarket very large oyster, or clam, or scallop shells, and fill those instead of the little dishes, and they are very pretty."

"Mother Blair, those would be sweet-simply sweet! I think I'll give a luncheon and have them."

"Do, Mildred, and I'll help," said Brownie, unselfishly.

"Or you can have a luncheon and I'll help!" Mildred replied. "And now what else can we do to-day, Mother? Make some sort of dessert?" "Yes, I think so; try this; it 's simple and very nice."

CHOCOLATE CREAM

Put the milk in a saucepan after taking out a small half-cupful and mixing it with the corn-starch; put in the sugar and salt. Scrape the chocolate (the squares are those marked on the large cake) and put this in next. When it steams, and the chocolate is melted and looks brown and smooth, stir up the corn-starch and put it in, stirring till smooth. Cool, add the vanilla, and pour into glasses. Just before serving put a spoonful of whipped cream on top of each glass.

"I do love that," said Brownie, as she wrote down the last word. "When I eat it, I always think I'm eating melted chocolate creams."

"So do I!" laughed Mildred. "Perhaps Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary won't eat their creams tomorrow night, and then you and I can have them for lunch the next day, Brownie."

"They'll surely eat them!" sighed Brownie. "They 're too good to leave."

When these were made and safely put away, all but the creamy tops, which were to go on just before supper the next day, Jack came strolling in.

"Smells awfully good!" he said. "Turkey, and onions, and mince-pies, and spicy things. Got any cooking for a boy to do-proper cooking, I mean?"

"I've just thought of something," his mother said quickly, “and I need you to do it right away. The girls are getting up a supper for Thanksgiving night, and they really ought to have some nice cake to eat with the dessert they have just been making."

"Cake!" ejaculated Jack. “I draw the line at cake, Mother Blair; making cake is not a man's job."

"Not cake, Jack,-only something to go in cake. I want you to crack some nuts very nicely and pick them out for the girls. Here is what they are going to make now."

salt.

NUT CAKES

2 eggs.

I cup of light brown sugar.

I cup of nut meats, chopped fine.

2 table-spoonfuls of sifted flour.

1/4 teaspoonful of salt.

Beat the eggs without separating them, and stir in the sugar, flour, and Add the nuts last, and spread the whole in a thin layer on a wellgreased tin; bake ten minutes, or till the top is brown. Cut into squares and take quickly from the tin; lay on a platter till cold.

Jack thought he could crack and even pick out nuts without injuring his dignity, so he went to work on a panful of pecans, and, by the time Mildred and Brownie were ready to chop them, they were all ready and waiting. Before long, the little cakes were in the oven and out again, crisp and hot; almost too good to be saved, the girls thought, and so did Jack. But they knew there would not be time to-morrow to make any

"ANY COOKING FOR A BOY TO DO?'"

others, so they had to keep these, and when they were cold, shut them up in the cake-box.

"Now I think you have cooked enough for to

day," said their mother, after she had tasted one small crumb of their cakes and pronounced them perfect.

"THE GIRLS ARE GETTING UP A SUPPER FOR THANKSGIVING NIGHT.

what can we have? Lettuce, and tomatoes, and other nice vegetables are really out of season, or,

at any rate, we cannot get them in this town; and yet we ought to have a green salad, because, of course, nobody could possibly eat chicken or lobster salad after a Thanksgiving dinner."

"I could!" called Jack, from the next room; but nobody paid any attention.

"Well, here is an idea-string-bean salad. That is very easy to make, and very good, too, and we can make it out of canned beans and nobody will know it. I will tell you how to make it now, because I'll be so busy to-morrow, and then, in the afternoon, you can get it ready quickly.

STRING-BEAN SALAD

I pint of string beans, cooked and cold. 2 hard-boiled eggs.

A little lettuce, if you have it.

French dressing.

Drain the beans well and sprinkle them with a little salt and pepper. If they are canned, let them lie on a platter for at least an hour. Arrange them on a few white lettuce leaves on plates, or omit the lettuce and use a few yellow celery leaves; put two strips of hardboiled egg on the plate, one on each side of the beans, and, just before serving, pour a little French dressing over all. This salad must be very cold.

"Now, certainly, that is all," said Mother Blair, as they wrote this down, "and I 'm sure nobody will go home hungry after such a supper as that!"

"And what hot drink are you going to have, Mother?"

"Oh, I almost forgot that. I planned something which is especially Thanksgivingy, too. It is really and truly what the pilgrim fathers are supposed to have made for Thanksgiving Day out of wild grapes; but I am sure they had no lemons or spices, so it could not have been quite as good as this. We will have this with the turkey and oysters for the supper, and no coffee or

drop it in); bring it all to the boiling-point, take out the lemon-peel, taste it, and, if not sweet enough, add more sugar. Serve very hot.

The next evening, just as it grew dark, Mildred and Jack hung a sheet before the double doors of the library, and they, with some of the cousins, gave a funny shadow-play, "Young Lochinvar," with a rocking-horse for the "steed," and a clothes-basket for a boat, and their father read the poem as they acted it. When everybody had stopped laughing at it, the junior Blairs brought in the supper (the oysters had been quietly cook

ing while they played), and arranged it nicely on the library table. It was a sort of picnic. Everything was hot and delicious, or cold and delicious, just as it ought to have been, and the mulled grape-juice was almost the best of all. After everything had been eaten up, the dishes were taken out into the kitchen, and they all gathered around the fire and told stories. At last, when the visitors had gone and bedtime had come for the Blairs, Mildred said impressively:

"Now that was what I call a Thanksgiving Day without a flaw!"

SEVEN BOOKS FOR MANY YOUNGSTERS

IN olden days, when there was something important and interesting which people ought to know about, a personage called the town-crier would go to the market-place, and to such other spots as were likely to be frequented by the crowd in town or village, and there he would first ring a bell, and then proceed to cry aloud the news or the information, whatever it might be, in some such manner as the following:

"Oyez, oyez, oyez ! Whereas it has pleased his most gracious Majesty, the King, to order a day of general rejoicing, with feasting and jousting and sports of diverse kinds, notice is hereby given to all and sundry. Oyez, oyez, oyez !" Then he would ring his bell again, and go tramping off, followed by all the small boys, tremendously excited, turning handsprings and yelling in true boy fashion.

But to-day we don't dress up in a gay doublet and striped hose, with a cloak over our shoulders and a bell in our hands, worse luck, when we have something to say that it would be worth listening to, and go shouting in all the squares and down Main Street. If we did, you might hear a ringing one of these fine mornings, and run out to see me shaking a bell, and calling aloud:

“Oyez, oyez, oyez ! Here you are, boys and girls. Christmas is coming. It is little more than six weeks away, and what are you doing about it? Listen to me, while I tell you of seven books for seventy times seven children, books that will help to make Christmas what it ought to be, the best and sweetest day of all the year. I want you to know of these books. One tells the story of a brave, upstanding youth who was a "runaway," and of all that befell him. And one tells the story of a little girl who had a millionaire father, and was very much troubled in consequence. And another has for heroine a very poor and very amusing little girl who believed in fairies, and tells what occurred to her. Then there is a book full of the wonderful lives of men who were more than conquerors, as conquerors are usually thought of. The fifth book relates the splendid doings of a lot of friendly giants, the sixth tells of the adventures of a pair of the cunningest baby bears that were ever imagined, and the seventh and last sings many

lovely songs, songs as shining and light and floating as the bubble that is blown in the sunshine."

Here I would ring my bell again, and cry out once more, "Oyez, oyez, oyez !" and then make my way to the next likely corner, with a number of smiling boys and girls trailing after me to hear me tell my news all over again.

Since, however, things are managed differently nowadays, I am simply going to tell you right here in the magazine something of these same seven books, so that if you want to give a book for a Christmas present, or want to have one given to you, you will know how to choose one that appeals to you.

And this magazine is the very best place in which to tell you of them, because five of the seven have appeared, in part or entire, in ST. NICHOLAS itself during the past year. So, as you will see, I am merely reminding you of stories or articles or verses that have already delighted you, and are now collected into book form. You will recognize at my first mention of it each of these friends of your reading hours during the past twelvemonth.

There are always the fine old books, to be sure, and you cannot go wrong if you put several of these on your list. But we all like stories, too, that take up our own problems and difficulties, stories that make us acquainted with people like ourselves, living the kind of life we lead, having the same sort of fun we enjoy, bearing the same troubles that come to us. That is why older persons like a good novel of contemporary life, and why boys and girls want books about young folk who are going to school, or who are off on vacation, who play and work and plan as they do themselves, or at least as they might. Besides these books of to-day, it is also good to get an adventure story or a fairy story or whatnot that is quite new and fresh, and which was never heard of before this season.

In "The Runaway," by Allen French, there is a group of boys and girls (and the story is quite as good reading for brother as for sister) who are just the type of healthy minded, unaffected, and likable youngsters you are the better off for knowing. Brian, to be sure, is not so much— but he learns a lot during the events of the story, and comes to be thoroughly ashamed of his meanness and his wrong standards; you can see,