So many hundreds of turkeys, done to a turn, now began to have an effect
upon the atmosphere. Few odors are more subtile and pervading than this,
and few more appetizing. Indeed, there is said to be an odd fellow, a
strictly American gourmand, in New York, who sits, from noon to dusk
on Christmas-Day, up in a tall steeple, merely to catch the aroma of
roast-turkey floating over the city,--and much good, it is said, it does
him.
Hard skating is nearly as effective to whet hunger as this gentleman's
expedient. When the spicy breezes began to blow soft as those of
Ceylon's isle over the river and every whiff talked Turkey, the
population of Dunderbunk listened to the wooing and began to follow its
several noses--snubs, beaks, blunts, sharps, piquants, dominants, fines,
bulgies, and bifids--on the way to the several households which those
noses adorned or defaced. Prosperous Dunderbunk had a Dinner, yes, a
DINNER, that day, and Richard Wade was gratefully remembered by many
over-fed foundry-men and their over-fed families.
Wade had not had half skating enough.
"I'll time myself down to Skerrett's Point," he thought, "and take my
luncheon there among the hemlocks."
The Point was on the property of Peter Skerrett, Wade's friend and
college comrade of ten years gone. Peter had been an absentee in Europe,
and smokes from his chimneys this morning had confirmed to Wade's eyes
the rumor of his return.
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