The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-11-30
THANKSGIVING IN NEW ENGLAND.
The First Festival.-Student discipline
Then and Now .-Thanksgivfng h1cked
Away Glimpse of Old Times.

The First Festival.-student Discipline
Then and Now .-Thanksgiving Kicked
Away. A Glimpse of Old Times.
The story of the first Thanksgiv-
ing Day in New England is on this
wise. Other days may have been
privately observed, but it was in
1881, on February 22nd, afterward
the birthday of George Washington,
that the first regularly appointed
Thanksgiving was held. The amount
of food in the colony had grown very
scanty, and the only hope of the col
onists lay in the ship Lion, which
had been sent back to England for
supplies.
More than six months had passed,
and the vessel did not return. Cover
nor Winthrop had no meal, and the
other inhabitants of Boston were
worse off. 1t is said that the public
stores had been so reduced that
fast had been appointed to pray for
relief, and that the Governor was in
the act of giving the last handful of
meal from his barrel to a poor man
in distress, when ship was spied en-
tering the harbor with provisions
enough for all. 1t was the Lion.
The fast was turned into a thanks
giving, and the day, though at diff
ferent season, grew into local OBJ
servance, and is now national holt
day.
| If the pious men who established
this day, and who in company with
kindred spirits founded Harvard Col
lege eight years later, could see its
celebration by their descendants, the
undergraduates of Harvard and
Yale, upon the Berkeley Oval' to-
day, they would doubtless wish the
first President, or "Schoolmaster, as
he was then called, Nathaniel Eaton,
back again. Eaton's ideas Of proper
corporal punishment allowed him ito
beat Mr.. Briscoe for the space of
about two hours with a walnut tree
plant big enough to have killed a
horse, and a yard in length, and
when he fell to prayer he only beat
him the harder for taking the name
of God in vain." President Eliot
would stand poor chance with the
"rushers," or even the "half-back," if
he should attempt to discipline
football team after such fashion.
But those were the times when Cap
tain Stone was fined one hundred
pounds for the poor pun of calling a
justice "just-ass," and Pastor Phil
lips was disciplined for speaking of
the Church of Rome as a true
Church.
"Tempora mutantur, ct nos muta-
mar IN iHts;" but the character of
Thanksgiving Day remained compar
atively the same till the national and
intercollegiate games appeared. Base
ball hit the religious Thanksgiving
hard blow, but football kicked it
clean over the goal. In my boyhood
good DR.. Blagden lamented from the
text, shut where are the nine?" the
fact that so few people came to
church on Thanksgiving Day; but we
youngsters knew that most of the
nine were at home getting ready for
the Thanksgiving feast which had
become the annual New England
celebration. Now, we know that
neither church nor dinner will keep
young men and maidens, and even
old men and matrons, from the bat
field where the flower of our cul-
tured youth fight and struggle for
pig skin, in spite of wounds and
bruises, and peril of life and limb.
Do we not see elegant coaches load
ed with fine women, and open car
riages by the hundred, and gentle
men and commoners, sports and cler-
gymen, huddled in rows upon hard
boards for hours, in the biting cold
and often drilling rain, to see the
football game' 1t is the favorite col
lege contest, and where beauty and
youth combine to make any custom
fashionable, it is difficult for the
masses not to obey their mandates.
But it is pity that it should so far
desecrate and destroy our old, though
homely, festival.
Far be it from me to criticise such
eminent educators as Eliot and
Dwight. and Carter, and McCosh, as