The Green Forest tribune., 1908-11-20

N " y ipdtln0 tiS N~
 eS velopment of an agricul-
 tural empire which must have arteries of steel, they were quickly followed by the same class of hardy settlers that had moved westward since the early days. Through the generations that move ment has proceeded, slowly at first but ever increasing in speed and volume. Over the Alleghenies, among the woodland and meadow stretches of Ohio and Indiana, across the prairies of Illinois and Iowa, through the Wisconsin and Min nesota forests to the valleys of Da kota and on to Puget sound The de- scendants of New Englanders have al ways been noticeable in the advancing tide of home makers and fortune-build- CTS along those parallels of latitude.
 Thanksgiving day as an annual No vember celebration marked by family reunions and feasting is one of the good things that have persisted among transplanted New England customs It Is now a national event, most gener ally honored. And the distinguishing feature of this feast-day is the trag edy of that royal fowl, the turkey.
 In the first years of the sos two great rival railroad companies were Fastening to secure for themselves in eastern Dakota the rich fields of a traffic yet to come into being. Both had entered the wonderfully fertile James river valley from the east, and as one turned it's line northward from Huron the other turned southward from Aberdeen, and the near approach of winter and the close of active oper- ations found the two competing con- Struction camps only few miles apart. With the advance of the rail come settlers upon the government do- main, and though farmers and wheat raisers were in the van, such nomad- ic and adventurous spirits as land agents and townsite boomers, traders and newspaper men could be discovered even more easily. Early in Novem- Der work upon the railroad lines halt ed and the builders retired to await the opening of spring. At the termi- nus of each road a little settlement had sprung up, less than a halfdozen structures marking the site of what was hoped to be and already was her aided as the metropolis of the valley.
 Upon such a situation steadily but surely crept the Thursday which the president of the United States had chosen as the annual day of thanks giving, and at the distance of only one short week the fact suddenly dawned upon the clustered intelligence of these two Dakota towns that there was not a turkey in the great Jim val ley north of Sioux Falls, and that 80 miles of wind-swept prairie lay be- tween a more hopeful field of possible supply at Watertown, near the Mime sota boundary There is material fer a volume of adventure in the account of the two rival expeditions dispatched simultaneously yet with all secrecy on 8 journey of hundred and sixty miles for fowls to furnish forth Thanks giving dinner, but this story must omit the details. One party returned hilari' ously successful with the three tur- keys that eloquence, strategy and mon- ey combined were able to procure in Watertown; the other, downcast, de- jected, and pessimistic, came back empty-handed.
 To emphasize their victory the suc- cessful town announced a prize turkey shoot Cat which all but Redfield marks men were barreO, turkey dinner at the hotel, and a grand ball in the rail road warehouse. This was calculated to make it's rival, Ashton, either swell with rage to bursting or wither away in reimbursement and despair.
 The Hateful day arrived. gray day with the first flakes of snow in the