The sun. [volume], November 22, 1914, FOURTH SECTION PICTORIAL MAGAZINE, Image 35

About The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916

Image provided by: The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation

                
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FOURTH SECTION
EIGHT PAGES
PICTORIAL
MAGAZINE
NEW YORK, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1914.
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UNCLE SAM'S
THANKSGIVING
With Malice Toward None,
With Charity -for All"
A PRAYER OF GRATITUDE
I believe in the hands that work; in the brains
that think ; in the hearts that love.
I am thankful for the blessed light of this day,
and I am thankful for all the days that have gone be
fore. I thank the thinkers, the publishers, the inven
tors, the poets, the singers, the painters, the sculptors
and the business men who have lived and are living.
I thank Pericles and Phidias, who made that most
beautiful city the world has ever seen, and were re
paid with persecution and death.
I thank Aristotle, the mountain guide and school
teacher, who knew how to set bad boys to work.
I thank Immanucl Kant, who was never more
than ten miles from his home, for luring the world to
his door.
I thank Emerson for brooking the displeasure of
his alma mater.
I thank Jamie Watt, the Scotch boy who watched
his mother's teakettle to a purpose.
By Elbert Hubbard
I thank Volta and Galvani, who fixed their names,
as did Watt, in the science that lightens labor and
carries the burdens that once bowed human backs.
I thank Benjamin Franklin for his spirit of
mirth, his persistency, his patience, his common sense.
I thank Alexander Humboldt and his brother,
William Humboldt those great brothers twain
who knew that life is opportunity.
I thank Shakespeare for running away from
Stratford and holding horses at a theatre entrance
but not forever.
I thank Arkwright, Hargreaves and Crompton,
from whose brains leaped the looms that weave with
tireless hands he weft and warp that human bodies
wear.
I thank Thomas Jefferson for writing the Decla
ration of Independence, for founding the public
school system, for dreaming of a college where girls
and boys would study, learn and work in joy.
I thank Benedict Spinoza, gardener, lensmaker,
scientist, humanist, for being true to the dictates of
the tides of divinity that played through his soul.
I thank Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer
for liberating theology from superstition.
I thank Tyndall the Irishman, Draper the Amer
ican, Herschel the German, Bjornson the Scandi
navian and Adam Smith the Scotchman for inspira
tion and help untold.
These men and others like them, their names
less known, have made the world a fit dwelling place
for liberty. Their graves are mounds from which
flares freedom's torch.
And I thank and praise too the simple, honest,
unpretentious millions who have worked, struggled
toiled, carrying heavy burdens, often paid in ingrati
tude, spurned, misunderstood who still worked on
and succeeded, or failed, robbed of recognition and
the results of their toil. To all these, who sleep in
forgotten graves, my heart goes out in gratitude over
the years and the centuries and the ages that have
passed.
Amen and Amen!