



Produced by David Widger.









                        THE SNOW-IMAGE

                             AND

                     OTHER TWICE-TOLD TALES



                 JOHN INGLEFIELD'S THANKSGIVING

                              By

                      Nathaniel Hawthorne



On the evening of Thanksgiving day, John Inglefield, the blacksmith, sat
in his elbow-chair, among those who had been keeping festival at his
board.  Being the central figure of the domestic circle, the fire threw
its strongest light on his massive and sturdy frame, reddening his rough
visage, so that it looked like the head of an iron statue, all aglow,
from his own forge, and with its features rudely fashioned on his own
anvil.  At John Inglefield's right hand was an empty chair.  The other
places round the hearth were filled by the members of the family, who all
sat quietly, while, with a semblance of fantastic merriment, their
shadows danced on the wall behind then.  One of the group was John
Inglefield's son, who had been bred at college, and was now a student of
theology at Andover.  There was also a daughter of sixteen, whom nobody
could look at without thinking of a rosebud almost blossomed.  The only
other person at the fireside was Robert Moore, formerly an apprentice of
the blacksmith, but now his journeyman, and who seemed more like an own
son of John Inglefield than did the pale and slender student.

Only these four had kept New England's festival beneath that roof.  The
vacant chair at John Inglefield's right hand was in memory of his wife,
whom death had snatched from him since the previous Thanksgiving.  With a
feeling that few would have looked for in his rough nature, the bereaved
husband had himself set the chair in its place