The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-28
THANKSGIVING LONG AGO

, of this queer yellow corn of theirs, but there is not woman of us. .or of them, who knows how to make johnny cake or bowl of hasty pudding. Practi- cally no milk for the children. and mo- body would dream of killing an OK or a COW. The Indian boys have shown our boys that if they will dig up the wild beans they will find ground-nuts- yes, the same that Caliban offered to Miranda; but there are not ground nuts enough in all our jurisdiction to keep thousand men and women alive. So we work through November, through December, and as the men meet each other. and as the women meet each other, there is more and more discus sion about sea food and the methods of 1t. You and I do not wonder that as January comes in the court chooses to remind all the people In the juris- diction that men does not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro ceedeth out of the mouth of God. It will not do to sit signing here for the flesh pots of Egypt, so we appoint a solemn fast day as Moses might have done in the wilderness, that we may learn how to use our flesh and our fish and remember that we all came here for the greater glory of God and to enjoy Him forever
 Charlestown was the chief town, and the Dnarlestown records say: "The people became much tired and discour- aged. especially when they heard that the governor had his last batch of l. from no less authority than Cotton Mather, says that Winthrop was giving his Hast handful of meal unto a poor man distressed by the wolf at the door," when a glad cry from without informed him that from Fort Hill the top mast of Pierce's ship could be seen when she was herself still below the horizon. Here was the triumphant sue cess of the first winter voyage of which we have any record Imagine how that glad news swept from hovel to hovel in the Boston which was four months old. and in the Charlestown, which was seven months old And you get some hint of the jubilant joy with which the general court reversed it's order for day of fasting, and proclaimed for Massachusetts Bay it's first day of thanksgiving. It was the first and last thank ksgiving ever appointed in Feb ruary. but there was 8 good reason for it then. And it is a good exercise at once in history and in housekeeping to ina zine what feasts were served at Winthrop's house and at Dudley's. Not the roast beef of old England. No But the roast venison and roast tur- key of New England and the cheese and the butter and the plum pudding and the beer of old England.
 from that day to this the people "in the Bay" have received the larger part of their bread stuffs from the west The governor bought first from the Indians as far west as the Connecti- cut river. My baked beans last Sun day morning came to me l suppose, from Southern California.
 Let me remark in passing that these tn ousand people were learning for the first time how good a Steady drink cold water is. At first the use of water as a drink was spoken of by their letter writers as if it were a hardship The English joke of the time called it, Adams ale. And one or two of the early letters speak of the freshness of the New England brooks as something their English correspondents could not understand