Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1897-11-14

the 1actS are aga1nSt hIm on Thanks giving. Every year the police depart ment of New York and Brooklyn issue permits for parades on Thanksgiving day. Brief entries on the police "blot- ter" itemize these parades in terms something like this:
 Red Rovers, 15o; Bowery East Eighth, lafayette, Astor, Bowery.
 Plumed Pirates. 75; Bowery, Grand, Allen, Canal, Bowery.
 This and a dozen other like items which follow have a similar meaning. The Red Rovers will be out parading with 150 members, the Plumed Pirates with 75, and will march along the streets specified with the full sanction of the law.
 Without any such sanction little pa rades, with from half a dozen or a dozen boys in each, get together some how in the more sparsely settled re gions of the city. In either case the idea is the same The lads wear masks and drape their sturdy legs in old petti- coats, to which latter they are so un- accustomed that they generally tum- ble down half a dozen times a minute They blow long horns and howl until they are red in the face; and though they would put their hands in the fire any other day sooner than do it, on this day they ring all the doorbelIs in the neighborhood and hold out their grimy little paws for pennies. Perhaps the masks prevent their feeling ashamed.
 This to a New Englander seems a shocking way of celebrating the festi- val, but it is only a very old custom that New England has outgrown 1t is as old as the Merry Mount of Vol laston and the Lord of Misrule"-as old as Thanksgiving itself, and, indeed, a good deal older.
 It is a usage that goes away back to the English harvest festivals, and to the Christmas waits" and mum mers" who went from house to house playing pranl1s. It goes clear back to the Roman Saturnalia, which was a harvest festival also; and how much further back it goes is more than the wise man can tell US. Probably to those ancient Asiatie gentlemen who were the common forefathers of the lot of us, and felt happy just as we do now, at harvest time if the crops were good.
 It sometimes seems hard for boys and girls to learn things, but it's really harder yet to make them forget A Yankee boy goes into the pasture and calls, Co boss! Co boss!" to his cows. in spite of the fact that there's no such word as "bos" in English, because the Roman cowboys said "bos" 2,000 and more years ago; and the Greek boy had done it before him, and long before that the Indo-Aryans of Asia began it. probably. 'Bos" is good Latin, and pretty good Greek and SansBrit; just as horn blowing in masks at Thanksgiv- ing is fair modern bluff at the Roman Saturnalia. The mask itself is doubt less borrowed from the Romans and Greeks outright; even savages make use of them, however.
 There are other parts of the country where almost every trace of the Satur- ! 2lia idea seems to have vanished There the boys'play football and have hare-and-hounds matches and bicycle races; and though football and hare are old enough. Solomon himself would have to admit that the bicycle is a new thing under the sun.
 But the Thanksgiving feast in some form is universal. Turkey and cram berry sauce in most cases, 'possum, persimmons and sweet potatoes for colored boys in the south, the big dim her and the family reunion everywhere, are all right in line with the old har- vest festivals.
 In the west, many churches are doing much to reestablish a close connection between harvest and Thanksgiving by decorating for Thanksgiving services with sheaves of wheat, stalks and ears of corn. aud other products of the earth. There are many places in America where German immigrants live who have brought to this country q Thanks giving day of their own, all ready made. They put up in some park tall wooden column and completely cover il with ears of corn, cucumbers, pumpkins, sheaves of wheat and other things, the big objects at the bottom and the light ones at the top. And of course great feast goes with that kind of a festival-all of which goes to show again that there is noth- ing new under the sun.
 In England, where the climate is pretty warm, most of the games and customs of old saturnalia were bor- rowed and transferred to Christmas, here, because we have two great fes- tivals in the fall and early winter. some of the old customs go to Thanksgiving, some 10 Christmas, and some to the Fourth of July; but the division and de- tails are different in different parts of the country. OWEN r.4NcDoN
 The Greek Court.
 The court of Greece must be an ideal court. since it knows of no such thing as a apr1r4