Each of us individually has reason for thankfulness.
If you can feel that you are honestly trying to do your duty, that is much to be thankful for.
If you are dissatisfied with yourself, you should be thankful for the power of self-condemnation— and thankful especially that you have long and blessed TIME ahead of you to make up for your mistakes and improve your record.
We live in a wonderful age—wonderful in the fact that life and liberty are fairly secure; wonderful in freedom of conscience.
You can believe in Heaven, Hades, Christian Science, or in nothing at all—and as long as you do not interfere with others, no one can imprison you, or question, or burn you at the stake. ——
We should all be especially thankful for the steady awakening of the national mind. We all pursue wealth—and doubtless circumstances compel us to pay too much attention to that line of effort. But we are all THINKING also. There are a thousand times more thinking, reading men and women to-day in America alone than lived on earth half a century ago. Love of knowledge is spreading, and with love of knowledge, love of justice and a sense of fairness will always be found.
Our material prosperity is great. But it is out- balanced by our mental prosperity. We are becoming a nation of THINKING men and women, and since that means real development, we have all reason to be thankful.
THE HARM THAT IS DONE BY OUR FRIENDS
Thought lives through the ages, flies about over the earth, and goes on visiting fresh minds, after the mind that gave it birth has gone back to dust and nothingness.
An Italian wrote words to this effect: