Bisbee Daily Review

OUR GREAT FESTIVAL
By ELLEN FOSTER STONE.

So now, we meet on common ground. Let's expect unanimity while we consider Thanksgiving day. What is now our national festival of thanksgiving was inaugurated as we remember by the Pilgrims' fathers at the end of their first year as pioneers. In praise, and gratitude for blessings, they openly gave thanks. What a year's toil and privation meant to them we will not try to picture, but at its end we know they commemorated all in a day of thanks, for the harvest which was theirs. For the earth had brought forth her increase and they were glad. And for that first Thanksgiving day we should now give thanks. It was much a factor in preserving blessings to us of today. Are we not content to believe then and, believing, to show in acts that the spirit of our Thanksgiving day should animate the doings of all our days? We are told, you know, that when all the people praise thee, then shall the earth bring forth her increase. From this we learn that the earth brings forth her increase as a result of the co-operation between man and his Maker. Thus we find man praising, before the increase comes. For this increase comes at the end of toil and labor. So then work is praise. Some decry the modern commemoration of Thanksgiving day, saying 'the spirit and significance, the original intent, is lost now in frolicsome forgetfulness. The day runs to sports and merrymaking.' Is it not better and happier to feel that it is not the spirit, but the expression only that is changed—not lost. And this, like other changes, has come to us as the sum of man's achieving skill in making possible the many avenues for recreation. This, in itself, is cause again for thanksgiving. There is always cause for thanksgiving, and chief among the causes is this very one, that we have reached a state in life where we have time to play a little. We grown-ups need our playtimes, just as the children need their toys. So when we see hurrying throngs on pleasure bent on our national Thanksgiving day, is it not true we catch the spirit of their wholesome happiness? Is this not better to believe than that the day is degraded from its original intent or ideal? We should let the memory of those early fathers strengthen our hearts and characters and help us to be gracious hosts to those pilgrims still who come. To them as to those earlier comers this is a land of promise and hope. No fairer compliment can a man pay a land than to leave his home for it. And no fairer compliment can we as hosts extend than to have our house in order to receive our guests. The lures and snares that might cripple and engulf them we should banish. Keeping our standard clean and high, our guests must strive to honor it. And that we of today may welcome and aid in shaping these newcomers into noble, self-helping citizens should give us cause for thanksgiving. And, happily, in this work of modeling by example, we each can aid, for education is largely imitation, following the word and act of another. So the small child, the middle-aged child, the adult and the aged each can have a part in this thanksgiving making, this standard bearing. There is so much to be thankful for. Not only for the earth's increase, but for everything that comes, of good or ill. For we may thus bind the good in our hearts and work to eliminate the ill. Let's think, mothers dear, of a few more things for which we may be thankful. For the smiling faces of children, the touch of baby fingers. For the sights that please us, the sounds that soothe us, the hands that serve us. For the workers seen and unseen whose labors lend to our comfort. For ears to hear, eyes to see and strength to speed us. Thanksgiving. For the stretch of woodland, the valleys and the hills, for the art in nature that causes a stream to pursue its sinuous course rather than the straight line. For the glisten of the plumage of birds and their sweet-throated notes at matins or at eventide. For the beauty and wonder and vista of thought opened by a polished, sculptured column of shimmering marble. Its journey from the quarry to the dome it supports, the road builders, the vehicles of transportation and they who conduct the traffic, all these represent uncounted toil and ability and genius. Of the tools with which all these are fashioned and the skill directing them. For all these works wrought and for the workers, thanksgiving. For the blessings of the present thanksgiving. They come to us as fruitage of the blessings of the past. For the journeyings of the Israelites, for the selling of Joseph into Egypt, for David and Goliath, for the light from Nazareth, for the doubts of Thomas. For all these, thanksgiving. Are they not blue prints or charts for character building? Do we not see in these stories of old parallels daily? We wander and disobey, we repent and are blessed, too often turning again, forgetful. And often does not the going of our Josephs down into Egypt found our future prosperity and happiness? We mothers know the anguish of bitter parting, whose clouds are but screening coming light. And daily do we little Davids not meet our Goliaths? Stalking, disdaining, but surrendering if we are valiant and use the weapons we know best. Would you believe there is really so much to be thankful for? Yes, for the cords that bind us, the trials that shape us, for our present-day comforts and conveniences. With all these for which to be thankful how can we go heavily about our work? Because of the evils that beset? True enough, but for their realization we should be thankful, for it is only so that we, recognizing, may work to banish. And that is our present work. That less of wrong shall confront those who come after is our desire. And greatest of all things for which we may be thankful is friendship. It shall bring our souls singing into endless day, for that being is blessed who finds from out the world the true heart of a friend.