Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 November 1914 — Bessie and Her Thanksgiving Pies [ARTICLE]

Bessie and Her Thanksgiving Pies

LITTLE Bessie Gray looked up from her story book with a sigh, and 4 as she looked up she caught the reflection of her face in a mirror over the table and sighed again. “Oh. dear! If I. were only slender and graceful and a grown up young lady or a princess and lived in a palace and bad heaps of money and could carry bunches of flowers to sick people! But here I am, nothing but Bes sie Gray—short, stout and homely, with a broad face and a wide mouth and not exactly poor, but then I have to work rather hard for a little girl, and as for the troubles of this world, somehow I don’t feel so badly about them as I ought to, or else the people around here don’t have any to speak of.” “Now’s your chance,” said a little squeaking voice. Where did it come from? There was nothing in sight but a heap of pumpkins on a board just outside the window and a little colored girl passing the garden fence, scantily clad and shivering In the cold November sunshine. All that Bessie knew of her was that her name was Poppy, and she belonged to a faifiily that were very shiftless, it appeared, from their unwillingness to v'ork and their ignorant ways of doing the little they could do.

But it could not be this little girl who spoke. She was hurrying on without turning a glance toward the house, eager, no doubt, to reach her miserable shelter from the cold. Bessie’s curiosity was fully aroused. She went out and stood upon the doorstep. The colored child was out of sight, and everything was still but the wind, and that hardly whispered through the lea Hess boughs of the pear trees. But there was the voice, close to her now. “Help me down,” it said. And Bessie’s mouth opened wider than ever as she saw the topmost pumpkin of the pile at her side moving itself without aid of hands. She took hold of its stem, and, although it was one of the heaviest of the lot, she scarcely felt its weight at aIL

“Carry me in,” said the voice again pautingly. Bessie had not believed ber own ears until uow. A pumpkin talking! That was more wonderful than Aesop's fables, truly. But why shouldn’t it speak as well as the brambles and oak trees and brass kettles? So she turned the great thing over upon its side and rolled it, or, rather, let it roll itself, up the steps into the kitchen. * “Cook me,” said the little, panting, squeaking voice again. “Cook me.” Just then her moth’fer came in. “Mother, may I make some pumpkin pies?” said Bessie. “Well, I don’t care,” was the answer of the busy woman. “None of us seems to be so very fond of them, but yon can make them if you’ll only promise to get somebody to eat them.” But the pumpkin began to squeak impatiently: “Cut me up! Cut me up!” And Bessie obeyed without more ado. Determined to have her pies as nice as they could be made, she poured out her milk, stirred in spice and sweetening and made the crust light, wondering while she rolled it out who would eat the pies when they were done. But the pumpkin told her as it boiled in the kettle —no longer with that lowsqueak, but with a deep, musical rumble, as if laughing with joy over its own fate —“Black Poppy’s people; black Poppy’s people.” And why shouldn’t a pumpkin rejoice in the sacrifice of its own life for a benevolent purpose? And Bessie herself, when she carried the pies to Poppy’s wretched home, having first set one aside in the cupboard that her mother might see that she could bake pies worth anybody’s eating, looked almost beautiful witji the excitement of doing a kindly deed. Her sun browned hands and stout arms were just fitted for the beautiful work they had been doing, and she had as much reason to be proud of them as any lady of her delicate fingers, for certainly those are the prettiest hands that do most willingly the work they were made for. And black Poppy’s people could not have received one of the graceful ministering spirits of the story books with more eloquent gratitude than they did the homely little girl and her heavy basket of pies. Indeed, to those half starved beings she was a vision of loveliness. a real angel of mercy!—-New York Press.