But so soon as this election was well over, the country
and the city settled down, with what Ransom used to
call "amazin'" readiness to the new order, such as it
was. Only the people who "take up the streets"
detached more men than ever to spoil the pavement. For
now a city election was approaching. And it might be
that the pavers and ditchers and shovellers and
curbstone men and asphalt makers should vote wrong.
Dane and his settlement were well aware that after this
election they would all have to move out from their
comfortable quarters. But, while they were in, they
determined to prepare for a fit Thanksgiving to God,
and the country which makes provision so generous for
those in need. It is not every
country, indeed,
which provides four hundred empty houses, every autumn,
for the convenience of any unlodged night-editor with a
skeleton key, who comes along.
He explained to his companions that a great festival
was near. They heard this with joy. He explained that
no work would be done that day, — not in any cigar-shop or
sweating-room. This also pleased them. He then, at some
length, explained the necessity of the sacrifice of
turkeys on the occasion. He told briefly how Josselyn
and the fathers shot them as they passed through the sky.
But he explained that now we shoot them, as one makes
money, not directly but indirectly. We shoot our
turkeys, say, at shooting-galleries. All this proved
intelligible, and Frederick had no fear for turkeys.
As for Sarah and Ezra, he found that at Ezra's boys'
club and at Sarah's girls' club, and each of her Sabbath-school classes and Sunday-school classes, and at each of
his, it had been explained that on the day before
Thanksgiving they must come with baskets to places named,
and carry home a Thanksgiving dinner.
These announcements were hailed with satisfaction by
all to whom Dane addressed them. Everything in the
country was as strange to them as it would have been to
an old friend of mine, an inhabitant of the planet Mars.
And they accepted the custom of this holiday among the
rest. Oddly enough, it proved that one or two of them
were
first-rate shots, and, by attendance at
different shooting-galleries, they brought in more than
a turkey apiece, as Governor Bradford's men did in 1621.
Many of them were at work in large factories, where it
was the custom of the house to give a roasted turkey and
a pan of cranberry sauce to each person who had been on
the pay-list for three months. One or two of them were
errand men in the market, and it was the practice of the
wholesale dealers there, who at this season become to a
certain extent retailers, to encourage these errand men
by presenting to each of them a turkey, which was
promised in advance. As for Dane himself, the
proprietors of his journal always presented a turkey to
each man on their staff. And in looking forward to his
Thanksgiving at the polls, he had expected to provide a
twenty-two pound gobbler which a friend in Vermont was
keeping for him. It may readily be imagined, then, that,
when the day before Thanksgiving came, he was more
oppressed by an embarrassment of riches than by any
difficulty on the debtor side of his account. He had
twelve people to feed, himself included. There were the
two children, their eight friends, and a young Frenchman
from Paris who, like all persons of that nationality who
are six months in this country, had found many enemies
here. Dane had invited him to dinner. He had arranged
that there should be plates or saucers enough for each
person to have two. And now there was to be a chicken-pie
from Obed Shalom, some mince pies and
Marlborough pies from the Union for Christian Work, a
turkey at each end of the board; and he found he should
have left over, after the largest computation for the
appetites of the visitors, twenty-three pies of different
structure, five dishes of cranberry sauce, three or four
boxes of raisins, two or three drums of figs, two roasted
geese and eleven turkeys. He counted all the turkeys as
roasted, because he had the promise of the keeper of the
Montgomery House that he would roast for him all the
birds that were brought in to him before nine o'clock on
Thanksgiving morning.
