Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 279, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 November 1915 — PASS ON THE JOY OF THANKSGIVING [ARTICLE]

PASS ON THE JOY OF THANKSGIVING

Making Others Glad Should Be Considered One of the Chief Duties of the Season.

IT’S the easiest thing In the world to look for trouble and to find it waiting, grim and terrible, for your search. It isn’t very hard to count your blessings in a negative sort of way, by saying, “Yes, it’s very sice, but it could be much nicer.” It’s quite the usual thing to hear folk complain —and complaining is heard more often than praise and thankfulness. Yet —so they tell us —a little over three hundred years ago a band of sturdy, venturesome Christian folk were very thankful indeed and praised their Lord fervently over a handful of parched vorn and a bit of unleavened bread. Once a year we set apart a day, consecrated to their memory, and try to throw aside the customs and complainings of the world as we know it. We gather together—families of us —and oat turkey and plum pudding; we talk of commonplaces and sometimes we feel bored and tired. Yet we are supposed to be celebrating. We have bushels of things to be glad for this year—hundreds; it seems more than we ever had. As we offer inp our blessings it won’t be hard to Remember that across a dividing bit iof ocean other people are starving to death, and that ought to make us just ia bit more thankful. As we see our 'families sitting around talking comimonplaces it may help us to think of other families in other countries that are fighting and dying on blood-stained battlefields. As we hear the crisp November wind banging In the trees, we 'ought to be mighty thankful that it Isn’t the sound of cannon and bugles and screams that we’re hearing. Oh, 'friends of mine, it won’t be very hard [to be thankful this year! As I was walking down Fourth avenue a few days ago I was thinking, •with my head in the clouds, of many things; thinking so hard that I did not notice exactly where my feet were taking me. It was only when I stumbled against a little boy who was running around a corner that I came down to earth with a bump. "Oh! I’m so sorry,” I said. “Did I hurt you?” “Dat’s a' right, lady,” said the little boy with a dirty Raphael-cherub grin. “I was only running!” "Oh!”—he was lingering at my side, so I felt it necessary to make conversation —“you were running—playing something?” "Huh!” the little boy grunted beatifically as he pulled up one ragged stocking. “Oh, no; I was jus’ running fer fun.” His JLlttle face crinkled with smiles again and he trotted on out of my sight.

Just running for fun, for the pure joy of living. A little boy with nothing else to make him happy —and yet a number of us frown and fret in the midst of all sorts of pleasures. I was talking to a chum of mine not long ago, and some way our conversation drifted around to Thanksgiving time, and our interpretation of the day.

“It’s all wrong!” said my chum earnestly, “all wrong!” “Why?” I asked curiously. *Tm always thankful for my blessings on Thanksgiving; so are most people. Why is it all wrong?” "Well,” answered my chum, “on rhanksgiving day we sit around and talk and eat —principally. - I once asked a little girl what Thanksgiving day meant, and she said ‘turkey and

cranberry sauce!’ And then we thank God complacently for our harvests, and our food, and our clothes, and his love. Isn’t it so?” "Yes,” I admitted.

“Well,” continued the girl, "the Pilgrims did that, too, years ago. But they did not stop there. After they thanked God for their own blessings they tried to pass on the joy to folk less fortunate than they were. They even invited the Indians, beings that they had every reason to be afraid of, into their homes and gave them a little of the season’s cheer. They kept Thanksgiving.” “Then” —I was choosing my words rather carefully—“then your idea is not to be thankful yourself—only to give someone else a chance to be thankful?” “But,” asked the girl softly, “isn’t that the right way to be thankful?” Isn’t it?

It’s a very easy thing to pass along the outside of life without even dipping down into the depths, and ever so many people do it because it is the easiest way. Somehow it is hard to convince folk that things that tear at their heartstrings are the things that they should see and know. It’s mighty easy to eat our Thanksgiving dinners without a thought of our brothers and sisters who are starving on some other street in the same city, and it’s only because it is so much easier, I reckon, that people do forget to pass a bit of their plenty and peace. But, as I write, I can’t help thinking of filled-to-overflowlng baskets that I have seen in missions, of eager children grasping fat turkeys, of mothers crying happy tears over coal and wood that will keep them warm and happy. I can’t help having my mind slip away from the well-filled tables and the happy smiles and the cheerful commonplaces of our own country, to the dreary homes in Europe that are being brightened because the people of this land were willing—yes, more than willing—to share their blessings with others.

Oh, friends of mine, it’s the easiest thing in the world to look for trouble, and it isn’t very hard to find people who are fretting and crying and counting their blessings in a negative sort of way instead of just being happy. But somehow, when we stop to look around us and think, the world seems to be a pretty nice place at Thanksgiving time.—Margaret E. Sangster, Jr., in Christian Herald.