The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1896-11-26
KANSAS AND HER THANKS.

Kansas is the best state in the Union.
On day of thanksgiving such deciar-
etion for his native state is expected OF
every man. But the kansan In observ-
ing the formality, need not depart from
| the truth. a.
In the years of our greatest drouths.
our corn is larger than that Of other
states seasons of greatest amplitude.
Our short wheat crops would prove
elsewhere cornIcopia- The cattle of our
prairies make the kline of other lands
mice, and our smallest runts are lum-
bering mastadons beside the pigs Of
other climes. Hanging midway between
the frigid SUBMITS of uninhabitabie
mountains and the low, damp, microbe-
breeding, swampy level of the sea, we
know scarcely any malady but that Of
superannuation. We live on plain
where sunshine is perennial: in state
whose prospects in the spring are too
unSpeakably magnificent to admit OF
complete fulfIlment, for the same sun
that gives promise shines on in even
banded justice and takes away, yet
leaves a plenty.
Every man within her borders, from
the ailuvial muck of the cOnverging
valleys OF the kaw and the Missouri TO
the sage brush dunes Of her western
limits, loves Kansas. and will, on this
day, be thankful that he is here.
AnG of politics?
Kansas returns thanks that politics
can be forgotten; that the same sun
which oaresses her kinky prairies under
one great economic thesis riots as blithe-
ly under another and opposing great
economic thesis. that the music Of her
prairie winds purrs as sweet song
whether politically the state sings in the
grand electoral chorus Of victory or
Uhines with the doieful minority.
With the envenomed abuse of one sec
ton contamina ting her air, and the too
eager compliments of another section
infiamlng her sense Of apostacy, Kansas
is glad to forgete politics and welcome
the day, not as time to vaunt her po-
litical victories or mourn her political
mistakes, but to welcome the day as
time to give thanks TO a Divinity so
great His plans need eternity for con-
clusion, so great He can not contem-
plate faction, nation or creed.
SO Kansas gives thanks. feeling for
twenty -four hours no greater concern
for her past political conduct than
modern Greek feels for the errors Of a
wanton Helen or heady Paris; than an
Italian feels for the sorrow of Rome
over an obstinately heroic Regulus;
than an Englishman feels for the muir
der of Thomas a Beckett.
For history is so long and life so short,
and right so aiternates with wrong; the
eagles of victory so often, before the
year is out, change to the yoke of SUBJ
lection, and the trials Of yesterday so
often turn to the triumphs of tomorrow,
that no man can gainsay Kansas privi-
lege to turn to her prairies and her peo-
pie and commend them.
For today Kansas will forget the indi-
yidual ambitions of her statesmen, the
controversies of her factions, the vitiat-
ed differences of party, and turn to her
broad fields where the corn stubble lies
winter-fiat, and the cattle Craze on the
tawny hills, and the winter wheat
brightens its green under winters
mist, and then and there make anew the
yearly, faithful, never-failing compact
with Nature that Times will be better
in the spring."