Connecticut western news., 1905-11-30

up life giving strength from the far away Croton hills. On this Thanksgiv- ] ing day let us one and all thank God | for scientific drainage and sewerage 1 and for pipes which bring to us pure
 water. Thank God for water with which we can cook. for pure water
 which we can drink and for pure Wal
 ter in which we can bathe our bodies
 and cleanse our garments and our
 homes. Water. water, rure water
 thank God for tine drinking water of
 the Thanksgiving table!
 | But, while thanking God for the res
 ervolrs and the aqueducts and the pipe 1 lines which bring to us pure water and
 the waste pipes which carry away the | disease breeding refuses shall we not | thank him also for the marvellous ma
 chinery which puts upon our tables the
 best viands that the harvest fields and
 the orchards afford? And when I | speak of this machinery I am not only
 alluding to the reapers and the blows | and the seed scatterers which we saw | exhibited at the St. Louis and Portland worlds fairs, but I also allude to the
 wonderful freight cars and the huge
 Atlantic and Pacific steamers, with
 their refrigerators and cold storage | plants, that bring to us the rarest and l the choicest of fruits and vegetables and animal meats and fish and bird
 meats and mollusks, no matter where
 they may grow or breathe the breath of life.
 Some people marvel at the mechan- l xx-hia
 farmer to SOW and reap fields of wheat | hundreds and thousands of acres wide where their ancestors had only few
 acres to a farm. Iris true, we must | gaze in awe at the wonderful possibil- | ities of the modern farm through the
 miracles of modern machinery. Last
 summer while riding through the cour- | try saw a great machine going over
 the prairie where once the farmer
 went swinging his scythe. This mar
 velous machine was called "a conl- ' bined harvester" It was drawn by
 thirty-two horses, driven chariot-like,
 four abreast. That machine cut the wheat, thrashed the wheat, gathered
 the clean kernels into bags, sewed up | the bags, threw them to one side and l tossed the straw into heaps. All this | happened while the farmer was out taking his pleasure ride behind his | thirty-two horses. Marvellous, marvel | ous, wonderful, wonderful combined harvesterp But the benefits which
 come to our table from "a combined
 harvester" are us nothing compared to
 those that come from the freight car
 and from the steamer.
 Sources of Food.
 Have you ever stopped to consider
 from how many various sources our food comesf I am nearing the coast of | Sydney, Australia. I see alongside the
 railroad track great numbers of rab- | bits strung up. There are thousands and tens of thousands of them. I see 1 the hillsides of New South Wales GOV ] cred with sheep. I go to the wharfs,
 and there find the great steamers be- | Ing loaded with them. What Is the | good of taking these thousands of sheep
 and rabbits to LondonT l say to the
 captain. It will take you at least three
 or four weeks to sail there. That meat
 will then be malodorous and stenchful' and sickening." No, mo-" answers the | III.
 in refrigerators. By running liquid
 ammonia through the pipes and letting | it evaporate we can make our own ice on shipboard. That meat will be sold
 In London markets as fresh as 1t Is | today" By the wonderful cold storage | system of freight car and of steamship we can today eat the choicest fruits of | the east and the west and have the ten | derest of meats carried through the
 Red sea and Suez canal. The New | Yorker can banquet upon California | fruits, and the inhabitants of San Fran
 cisco, watching the seals climbing over
 Seal Rocks" In the Cliff House res | taurant, may order his oysters brought from Maryland bay. Wonderful, won
 derful food provider Is machinery! Machinery may bring to us our
 Thanksgiving dinner. with caviare ship 1 ped from Russia, and mollusks gath
 cred from Atlantic seashore, and fish | caught off Florida coast, and bread
 made from Dakota wheataelds, and
 Ohio turkey fattened on Michigan corn
 and stuffed with marvellous foreign
 dressings, and potatoes planted In Hi
 nois, and pumpkins fattened in New | England, and mince pies concocted in
 New Jersey, and our coffee gathered | in Java, and our bananas brought from | Central America, and our almonds | grown in Syria, and our oranges ship
 ped from California, and our olives
 sent from Italy, and our terrapin
 caught in Virginia, and our canvasback
 ducks shot in Chesapeake bay, and our cranberries grown near Kalamazoo,
 and our plum pudding and fruit cake.
 like the spices of the Egyptian num-
 mics. gathered from everywhere, and
 with their indigestible qualities ready
 to change us into mummies If we only | give them a big enough chance, while
 as a cupola upon this many floored or
 many coursed Thanksgiving meal we
 lay on the big, thick layer of richly
 favored homemade ice cream from our
 own Jersey COW, without which our
 children consider no Thanksgiving din
 ner worthy the name.
 But I must stop describing the many different sources from which our l Thanksgiving dinner comes, or else | your hunger for material things will l crowd out your desire for a spiritual
 Thanksgiving. Suffice to say the rail
 road track and the ocean greyhound as l well as the wonderful modern reaper
 and mower of the farm are spreading
 for us a Thanksgiving banquet of
 which the Romans and the Greeks and
 the Hebrews or even our own ancestors
 of a hundred years ago in the widest flights of their imagination could never
 conceive or dream. No wonder all the
 menus or the bills of fare of all our
 large city restaurants are printed in a
 foreign language. Foreign lands con-
 tribute a great part to all American | honuuatS Thank God Iopon nan f,rr-