Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/139

Rh aspect that it warmed my very heart, and I saluted Thanksgiving-day with right thankful feelings. The whole scene with its hills and its valleys, now brightened by the morning sun, actually resembled the scenery around us, and I thought of the Christmas morning at our church with its burning candles; the pine wood and the lit-up cottages within it, the peasants, the sledges with their little bells, and all the cheerful life of the sacred Christmas time! But our little red-painted cottages were changed into small white houses which looked much more affluent.

My hands were so benumbed with cold that I had difficulty in dressing, and was all in a shiver when I went down to breakfast in that little room, where, on the contrary, it was stiflingly hot from an iron stove. The breakfast, as is usual in the country, was abundant and excellent: but I cannot believe, that these abundant hot breakfasts are wholesome.

After breakfast we went to church, for this day is regarded as sacred throughout the country. The preacher enumerated all the causes for thankfulness which his community had had, as well publicly as privately, all the good which they had experienced since the Thanksgiving festival of the foregoing year; and although he was evidently not of a practical mind, and the history of the year was given rather in the style of a chronicle, “on this solemn and interesting occasion,” yet from its subject and purpose it was calculated to engage the mind. Why have not we; why have not all people such a festival in the year? It has grown out of the necessities of the nobler popular heart; it is the ascribing of our highest earthly blessings to their heavenly Giver. We have many publicly appointed days for prayer, but none for thanksgiving: it is not right and noble.

I have inquired from many persons here the origin of this festival in America; but it is remarkable how little people