Evening star. [volume], November 25, 1934, Image 73

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
Fiction
Stye fktt&ttj Pto
jWagajine
Features
PART 6. WASHINGTON, D. C., NOVEMBER 25, 1934. 16 PAGES.
, . . 4 . . --- - ■ ■ ■ ■ , ■ . i ,
xuax.
BY BRUCE C4TTOS.
YOU wouldn't think they had
much to be thankful for—those
early Puritans who set aside a
day for prayer and feasting to
express their thanks to Ood for
His mercies.
To be sure, they had come through
a horribly difficult year, and they were
beginning to see that the worst was over.
They had found that the weather was
not going to kill all of them in the cold
Winter months, that the Indians were
not going to swoop down and drive them
into the sea, that they could really tame
this wild new land and make it produce
food, clothing and shelter.
They had found, in other words, that
they could build a new homeland for
themselves in America if they were brave
and enduring enough—and so, being de
vout folk, they offered their thanks to
Heaven for it, and began a cus
tom which is followed to this day.
But when you look
back you can see
that there were plenty of things there
to frighten and discourage them, if they
had stopped to think about them.
They occupied a little fringe of land
on the very edge of one of the greatest
continents. At their backs was the sea
—wide, stormy, menacing. Before them
was the wilderness—one of the most
tremendous reaches of wild land that
ever existed.
Dense forests stretched away to the
west, for league on league. In the Sum
mer the forest was a dark hiding place
for lurking Indians; in the Winter it
was a frost-bound desolation, swept by
freezing gales, a very Siberia of lifeless
emptiness, lying just beyond their little
farms.
AND all of this, to the men of those
'' days, must have seemed infinite. No
man knew what lay beyond the wilder
ness. It was a perpetual menace, an
enormous shadowland that dwarfed
their tiny settlement to pigmy dimen
sions. Any thinking man, surveying the
state of things in the early 1600’s, must
have concluded at once that the task
of conquering this continent was utterly
impossible—a hopeless endeavor that
could only result in
defeat and death for
those fool enough to
try it.
But the
colonists, as
we know, re
fused to be
I'X frightened.
Their little cabins were there on a nar
row strip of cultivated land between sea
and wilderness, true enough; the In
dians might at any moment come down
in a flood with knife and firebrand and
annihilate them; the power of France,
far to the north, was a menace never to
be forgotten.
But the Pilgrims appointed a feast
day, offered reverent thanks to God, en
joyed the bounty that they were com
pelling the rugged land to surrender to
them—and paved the way for man’s
greatest triumph over hostile nature.
All the future was there, in that day
of Thanksgiving—the future of a wil
derness tamed and made fertile, of hos
tile tribes routed and made harmless, of
busy cities and pleasant farms and com
fortable homes and broad highways,
reaching to the west beyond imagining,
a great land where the human spirit
could be free and triumphant. All of
that was implicit in the first Thanksgiv
ing day; it became possible, that is, be
cause those early settlers were tough
enough to count the blessings they had,
rather than frighten themselves into de
feat by gazing too long at the surround
ing dangers.
CO MUCH for the Pilgrim fathers, back
^ in 1621. Now let’s bring things
down to the year 1934.
Like the Pilgrims, we are between a
wilderness and an ocean these days. We
find ourselves in a position where we
must go forward or give up, conquer or
die. The ashes of the dead years are
Continued on Third Page