Thanksgiving Day.

Every ancient nation or country, from time immemorial, has set apart one day or more in the year in which to express its gratefulness to the "immortal gods" for the gifts of nature. Our Thanksgiving day was probably first suggested by the old Hebrew feast of Tabernacles, celebrated soon after the gathering of the harvests. But the earliest modern record of such a day, observed by official proclamation, is found in Holland under the date of 1575. The Pilgrim fathers, being ever imbued with feelings of thankfulness at their own virtues, no doubt got the idea of the festival during their life among the Dutch.

At any rate, in 1621, after the first harvests in Plymouth, Gov. Bradford sent out four men fowling, with the now chestnutty exhortation, that they "might after a more special manner rejoice together." Henceforth upon any special good fortune befalling them, such as rain in drouth, arrival of stores from England, or favorable colonial legislation, the Governor would proclaim a day of thanksgiving and prayer. Eight days were set apart in this manner in Massachusetts up to 1639. In Plymouth Colony the day was celebrated three different years up to 1680, when, from the reading of the records, it evidently became an annual custom.

The early Dutch Governors of the New Netherlands also used to appoint an occasional Thanksgiving day. Then the portly old citizens would kill their fat fowl and, with eating, drinking and smoking, cultivate within their ample bosoms, in their artless Dutch way, a love for all human kind.

During the Revolution, the day was a national institution, being annually recommended by Congress. But after the general thanksgiving for peace, 1784, our ancestors of a later date did not have anything worth being grateful for until the adoption of the Constitution in 1789. Moreover, for a long time after the Revolution, the official observance of Thanksgiving was confined to New England, and the first Thursday of November was generally selected. Various local customs existed throughout the country during this time, but very slow were the Governors, especially in the southern states, to appoint a day by official decree. New York took up the custom in 1817, but often faltered in expressions of thanks in the succeeding years.

Thanksgivings for victories were recommended twice by Lincoln and once or twice by Congress during our Civil War; and after the close of the war, Presidential proclamations became customary. Now Thanksgiving day is celebrated in every part of the United States and is almost as much thought of as Christmas or New Years.

There is an ancient fable in Holland, to the effect that there was once a Dutch University which forbade the students going home on Thanksgiving, or at least gave them only one day to do their celebrating. The people round about thought that the University had nothing to be thankful for, and so took their sons away at once, fearing that where no gratitude was, there no soul could be. This was one of the first cases of a "soulless corporation," but history unfortunately has been unable to record it as the last.