The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-28
Edward Everett Hale in Woman's Hom Companion for November.

Edward Everett Hale in Woman's Home
 Companion for November.
 THE old New England Thanks kOD giving runs as far back in its
 history as November, 1921. Dear old Governor Bradford writes as follows of that year when his little Plymouth colony scarcely counted one hundred people:
 "Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might, after a special man ner. rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors."
 In the larger New England colony the Colony of the Bay" as we Yan- kees call it. the first Thanksgiving had an origin 'more dramatic. When in f630 the well equipped colonists had arrived in the Bay. they landed on the Fist of June, prosperous and well prepared; their women and chil- dren picked wild strawberries in the fields, while the elders went up to Salem to consult with the pioneers. The "forefathers,' as we call the Plymouth people. landed on the shortest day of
  ment landed on the longest, with every omen of prosperity
 But il was very clear to man of Winthrop's foresight that there thousand or two people could not subsist for a year on food unfamiliar to1 them with out discontent; or, what was worse than discontent, without sickness or death. In fact, before a year was over a hundred of his thousand emi- grants had already died Winthrop drew on his company at home for every penny he dared to draw, and he charged Captain Pierce-perhaps the best of his captains, in the John and Mary. perhaps the best of his ships to return to England as quickly as he could to discharge such cargo as he could take over as quickly as he could. to load the John and Mary with wheat and barley and oats and rye and cheese and butter, and to come back as quick ly he could. Winthrop knew, as all men know, that on a coast where a boy could pull out of the water a halibut which weighed twice as much s the boy did, nobody was going to starve to death; and nobody did But Winthrop knew as well that his Eng fish peasants would weary of cornbread and clam chowder, and he provided In this fashion for those who would long for the flesh pots of Egypt. When he saw Pierce's topsails disappear be- yond the rocks, which are outside Bos- ton harbor, on the way to England, he knew that he had done his best to provide for his people.
 That was in the midsummer of 1880. Give Pierce two or three months for his homeward voyage, let him stay a month in some port between England and Ireland and dispose of his Ameri- can cargo Let him load again with him two or three months to come back to us, and he ought to be in the bay here by midwinter Observe, people did not then go to England and come back in three weeks, as they do now, if they choose
 We'll all things happened as in his foresight he had seen, and some things happened which he had not seen. Lady Arbella Joh nson died, gracious and elegant, with all the courtesies of rank and education. And her husband died just when we had laid out Boston and assigned to them the beautiful slope facing east and north for their ten arce homestead. The good -natured In- dians can give us or sell us enough