Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 280, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1912 — Around Thanksgiving Time [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Around Thanksgiving Time

by MARGARET E. SANGSTER

HE household year, like the 01 year of the nation, has its BO red-letter days and its joy|U > ous anniversaries. Around Thanksgiving the sweetest associations of the home and the tenderest memoA ries of the nation meet If V\ and cluster. Do you ever stop to think how new this country Is? Should you go* to Rome you would find more old walls and monuments and buildings that have been standing for centuries, and still testify to the past splendor of the once imperial city. Crossing the Atlantic and setting foot on the shores of England, the' past greets you on every hand.. You are immediately made aware that our friends across the watery are living among old traditions, while in their ceremonials, as when a king was crowned with his queen at his side, they are keeping up the customs and recalling the grandeur that have been theirs for a thousand years. Over here, in comparison with other nations on the globs, we are still in our childhood and can hardly be said to have more than reached the beginning of our maturity. Yet we have eight million people, and we jostle when we walk on the street people who have sought us from the far east, from the islands of the ocean, from northern and southern Europe, and, indeed, from everywhere beneath the sun. To my mind there is something wonderful and significant and heartstirring in the thought that a man of our choice in Washington in the White House presides as our chief executive over our vast territory and our mighty mass of citizens. He sends out word in November, and lo! the whole commonwealth listens and obeys. By one consent Americans, native-born and adopted into our ranks from abroad, cease from business, observe a holiday and thank God on the last Thursday of November. Everyone does not go to church, but the churches are open. There are services, there is exquisite music and eloquent sermons are preached, and the nation is thus uplifted to a higher plane, and there is an obvious reminder that we owe thanks to our Creator and praise to our Father in heaven.

Another charming feature of this peculiarly popular and wholly American holiday is the assembling of families around the Thanksgiving dinner table. Again look back, not over a thousand years, but over very nearly three hundred, and you will see how significant ' was the origin of this annual Jubilee. In 1621 Governor Bradford of Massachusetts issued a proclamation to the little colony setting apart a day of Thanksgiving fbr the first in-gathering harvests. Should you ever go to Plymouth, Mass., and stroll through the old graveyard there, tears would spring to your eyes even now when you saw by th 6 records on the stones that Death was very busy In reaping the first harvest of life in New England. These hardy pioneers who came to our bleak Atlantic coast that they might have freedom to worship God as they chose, were made of stuff too strong to be daunted by Illness, want, famine or death. The attacks of hostile Indians in the night did not turn them from their purpose of settling in the new country, and women and men alike were heroic in their scorn of peril and their determination to snatch success from apparent defeat The first harvest was scanty, but they assembled in church and thanked God for it, and in theft homes they sat down to the best dinner they could provide. The wild turkey furnished the meat for the feast This

American bird is always the piece de resistance at a Thanksgiving dinner 4 The domestic bird retains some traits of primitive wildness and, aB every farmer’s wife knows, Is prone t© wander away, and travels, by preference, In a flock. Still looking back, we discover that after li2l other colonies followed the example of Massachusetts. After the Revolution the governors of various sta' -1 Issued proclamations as Governor Bradford had done. But it was not until 1863 that the day became ba-~ tional. It was then that the president proclaimed a general thanksgiving, and this good custom has been followed until the present year. The old homestead Is the rallying Tlace for itß sons and daughters, If they have been scattered far afield in pursuit of business or pleasure. They make an effort to return to the loved ones there and no triumph of a Parisian chef or art of the finest cookery has quite the taste of mother’s pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving dinners may be eaten In hotels and boarding houses and on shipboard by enthusiastic Americans, and in city homes where cousins, aunts and uncles shake hands and sit together at the meal, but they are best when they are given beneath the roof where once the children played. In comparison with that first harvest and that first Thanksgiving, let ua glance, shall we say, at the markets of America in 1911, Fruits have been gathered from the orchards of Oregon, Michigan, California, Connecticut, Florida, and from too many localities and states for enumeration here. Think of the peaches, grapes, apples, plums, cherries, pears, oranges and bananas that the great country produces. We are learning how to assist nature by scientific processes in farming so that annually our orchards and vlneyartis are Competing with our mines of coal, silver and

copper as sources of wealth. Our grains, wheat, oats, rye, rice and Indian corn yield us enough to feed our own people and replenish the exhaustion of other lands. When the crops are abundant there Is rejoicing from coast to coast. The farmers have many things to with. Sometimes there is a plague of grasshoppers or of locusts, sometimes there is drought, and again there are floods, but, on the whole, from year’s end to gear’s end, the soil gives back In Divine multiplication the seed which the human hand has sown. We cannot sit down at the simplest Thanksgiving dinner without seeing upon«it contributions from every section of our big republic. As women and girls are the true homemakers, it is well fbr them to take a sincere and intelligent interest in the affairs of their country. Men seldom rise higher in goodness, frankness and patriotism than the women whose Influence over them tends to purity, bravery and truth. We ought to care about the politics of our country. When we thank God for peace, wo ought to be additionally grateful that the menace of war has been swept out of sight by the wise leadership in our councils of state. When we thank God for schools and for freedom of speech and an untrammeled press and good books that are as plentiful as autumn leaves, we should again remind ourselves and the children around us that we owe these tokens of advanced civilization to our republican government and to the goodness and guardian care of Jehovah, who haß given us “dominion over palm and pine.” Another word may be in order. Why should We compress our Thanksgiving into one day? Why not-be thankful all the time little things as for the great ones, and most of all for the dear ones of hearth and home?