(Thousands of people will not gather around a sumptuous Thanksgiving table this week. They will be serving a meal to many thousands more who cannot afford even a modest Thanksgiving table at home—or even afford a home. Or a table. Perhaps, says Dr. Frank Crane in this column from the first year of the Woodrow Wilson administration, those who are serving and those who are being served understand the day the most)
LEARN THANKSGIVING FROM THE HAVE-NOTS
The President has proclaimed the annual day of Thanksgiving. Probably that comes to you as a joke. ”What have I to be thankful for?” you ask and then begin to run over the list of your grievances.
But go and see the have-nots, and maybe you will learn something, if you are not a hopeless whiner.
Visit the have-not nations. Live a while in Russia or Mexico, have your opinions suppressed, your property confiscated, your life threatened, all without justice; perhaps then you may get a few thrills when you look at the American flag.
Return in your mind to former ages. Feel how it seems to have the nobility despise, curse and rob you and treat you as a dog; to have a state church clap you in prison or roast you in the public square for daring to think; to have solemn magistrates condemn your mother to be hanged as a witch; to have your daughter outraged by the lord of the manor and your sons killed fighting his battles.
If your skin is black, go back…and live among the have-nots of Liberty, and be sold in the market place as chattel.
If you are well, turn to the have-nots of health to the hospitals where the crowded prisoners of pain would give the world to walk and eat and work as you now do. Go to the dim chamber of the invalid and listen to the consumptive’s cough, the dyspeptic’s groan, the ravings of the fevered and the suffering and smitten. Then, if you are anything of a man, come out and hire someone to kick you for complaining, ever.
The have-nots of sound; observe the deaf and dumb not to gloat over your advantages, but to realize what music and the voices of people and the gift of speech mean to you.
Watch the pathetic faces of the have-nots of light; and, seeing the blind, learn to be humbling grateful toward the fate that grants you the light of heaven.
Do you know the have-nots of love? Consider them and if one heart ever so simple loves you, be thankful. Mark the deserted wife, her dreams shattered, her heart broken, her children fatherless, and the burden of care upon her shoulders; and if you have a husband that’s half decent, be thankful.
Go to the wrong, betrayed husband; look upon him; and if you have a faithful wife who believes in you and is glad because of you, be thankful.
Little girl, little boy, have you and mother that hugs you up and a daddy that’s proud of you? Think of the have-nots, the boys and girls whose mother is still and gone or whose father is no more, and be as thankful as you can.
Have you children? Call to mind the have-nots, the mother whose loneliness is most bitter of all, the loneliness is that most bitter of all, the loneliness of empty arms, of a breast where once cuddled a curly head.
Then think of the worried, wretched, remorseful, perverted of those whose conscience stings them and if you have the comfortable self-respect of decency, be thankful.
Visit, in your mind, the wide realm of the dead. You have the unspeakable gift of life. You walk in the sun, and breathe the sweet air, and get the message of the trees, the mountains and oceans; for you the flowers blow, and the snow falls, and the hearth light burns, and children’s voices sound and the light of love kindles in someone’s eyes.
Be thankful for life.
Think of the have-nots and reflect. Who am I that I also should not also be among them?