The evening leader. (Tarpon Springs, Fla.) 191?-19??, 1916-11-29

II L
Thanksgiving day is an Ameri-
can custom started by the Pill
grims who landed on the new
continent and faced hardships which
few can realize who are reared in
the wealth and luxury Of the land to-
day.
The season had been hard one.
Many had died and the prospect of
starvation during the cold winter with
its ice and snow doomed large. So,
when the harvest yielded enough to
keep them until another season would
produce the necessities of life, they
met that last Thursday in November
in year 1921, and gave thanks to their
God, who had remembered them.
Thankfulness is usually in inverse
ratio to the value of the thing for
which we give thanks. This is no dis
arrangement of the things we are CRATE
full for; but humanity does not think
of thanks until it has felt the terrors
Of distress.
The rich who live in luxury and ease
do not thank with their hearts. Their
thanks are but formal expressions of
meaningless words. How can words
mean anything when one has not felt
the things which make for thankful
ness?
But the poverty-stricken who have
faced starvation pour out thanks from
their humble hearts for the things
that have saved their lives.
Those who live in gorgeous homes
with comfortable fireplaces do not
think of thanks. But those who live
in the little howell with big cracks in
the walls and crevices about the doors
and windows and without fuel, give
thanks for the comfort of fire.
We do not prize health until we have
lost it, and we do not appreciate life
until we have faced the danger of hav-
Ing to give it up.
That which we have we are likely to
accept as matter of course; but be
deprived of it and the sudden realiza-
ton of its value jars our souls like an
earthquake.
We are thankful in the full sense of
the word for things necessary to life
and happiness only when we have had
to do without them.
We are not thankful for that 20
which we are accustomed and accept
thoughtlessly. But when we are de-
prived of the necessities of life and
face the hardships, including death.
that come as result, we are thankful
with all our heart.
America has more to be thankful for
yearly, than any other nation 10 the
world; but our thanks are tempered
by the gravity of the sorrow of our
neighbors.
The year has not been one of great
happiness, peace and prosperity. 1t is
a year of travail for humanity-the
travail of people being born again.
But out of it will come a disciplined
and sober people; a people who will
know the realities of life better.
We will learn that life is serious
matter, and no silly, simpering affair.
The war has brought US again to an
understanding of the terrible earnest
ness of the thing we call life.
The earth is in process, and we still
have earthquakes and volcanic erup-
tions.
Humanity, too, is In process, and
strife and sorrow and death will con-
tinue to be it's lot. We must face life
resolutely and meet destiny undis-
mayed.
This year we will not be thankful
so much for the blessings we have re-
ceived, for the things that have been
given to us-for being pampered by a
prodigal Providence-and being re-
leved of our burdens, as we will be
thankful for the strength to bear them.
In the shrine of our hearts our deep
est prayer is not that we shall be re-
lieved of our burdens; but that we
shall be given the strength to bear
them, for we are great in the degree
and the manner in which we face our
tasks and perform them. The Great
Souls are those that have suffered
and endured.
Our Thanksgiving this year will be
no perfunctory, infantile prattle be-
cause of safety.
This is year of reckoning with
fate; Of being thankful if we, our
selves, have not fallen in the wreck
age. We are thankful not for what
has happened; but for what has not
happened.
Life is not a trivial pastime. It is
deadly earnest. 1t is the course that
destiny takes, and let US be thankful,
not for less of life, but for more Of it,
and the courage, the fortitude, the
strength, and the persistence to meet
BIS difficulties and continue it's course
undaunted by disaster and unspoiled
ty success.
We are thankful for Character, not
charity, and for iron wills that have
not been broken by the inevitable -