Now I have seen somewhere around 20,000 days come and go, and every one of them has brought a dozen things to be thankful for. I sometimes think as the hands crawl around the clock at Hope Farm that the day they are recording right now is about the best of all. I have passed Thanksgiving Day in the mud, in the snow, in a swamp, on a mountain, in a crowded city, on a lonely farm—under about all the conditions you can mention. I have given hearty thanks over baked beans, salt pork, bread and cheese, turkey and all the rest, but before the fire tonight somehow they all burn away except that experience in Ike Sawyer’s Hotel.
They were stuck in the mud—with a broken axle—in a swamp in Northern Michigan. No one had dreamed of an auto in those days. You forded the swamp and stream in the primitive old way. It was a rich, middle-aged lumberman and his young wife. How this tough, hard pine knot of a man ever selected this soft-handed and selfish girl I cannot see. She had come with him into the woods on one of his business trips, and the silence by day and the whispering of the pines at night had filled her with terror. The rough, sturdy man suddenly saw that, unlike his first wife, this girl was not a helper and a partner, but a toy—a hothouse flower who could not live his life or help fight his battles. He had a great business deal on hand which required all his energies, but this girl could not understand or help him. She had begged and cried to go back to “civilization,” and they were on their way. And in this lonely place the axle of the carriage had snapped and left them in the mud.
It had been one of those gray, melancholy days which seem to fit best into the idea of a New England Thanksgiving. Now twilight was coming on and there were dark shadows in the swamp. The woman had climbed out of the mud and stood on a log by the roadside. She had been crying in her disappointment, for she had expected to reach the railroad that night, and spend Thanksgiving in the distant city—far from this lonely wilderness. Her husband was bargaining with an old farmer who finally agreed to haul the broken carriage back to the blacksmith shop for repairs.
“I’ve got entertainment for beast,” he said, “but not for man—so I can’t put you up. Quarter of a mile down the road Ike Sawyer runs a sorter hotel.”
He hauled the carriage out of the mud and started back along the road. There was nothing for us to do but hunt for the hotel. You may have seen some strong, capable man come to a crisis in his life where it suddenly flashes upon him that the woman of his choice is after all made of common clay, with little of that spirit or courage which we somehow think should belong to the thoroughbred. It was a very doleful, unhappy little woman and a sad and silent big man who walked through the mud and up the little sand hill in search of the hotel. They had nothing to be thankful for, and, yet did they but know it, they were to find the most precious thing in life in this lonely wilderness.
Around a turn in the road we came in sight of a long, rambling building, weatherbeaten and out of repair. Over the door was a faded sign, “Farmers’ Rest.” On the little porch just under this sign sat a white-haired woman in a wheel-chair. In front of the house a little man with a bald head and a pair of great spectacles perched at the end of his nose was chasing a big Plymouth Rock rooster about the yard. The old people had not noticed us, and we stopped in the road to watch them. The old man finally cornered the rooster by the garden fence and carried him flapping and squawking to the old lady. She examined him carefully, and evidently approved the choice, for the old man, still holding the rooster, pushed the wheel-chair into the house and then, picking up his ax, started for the chopping block just as we turned in from the road. We startled him so that he dropped the rooster. The gray bird did not stop to welcome us, but darted off into the shadows. He mounted the roost in the henhouse from which the old man easily pulled him a little later.
You may have seen old pictures of country hotel-keepers bowing and scraping as their guests arrive. Ike Sawyer could not play the part. He just peered at us over his spectacles and rubbed his hands together.
“Walk right in,” he said. “Me and Annie can put you up.” Then he led the way into the rambling old house. It was dark now, and the old man lighted a lamp so that we could look about us. The old woman did not rise from her chair, but she smiled up a welcome.
“Ain’t walked for 10 years,” explained her husband. “I play feet and she plays hands, and between us we make out fine.”
The old man bustled about and started a fire in the big fireplace. The young woman had entered the poor old building with an angry snarl of discontent on her face. It was all so mean and hateful to be obliged to stay in this lonely, dreadful place. As the fire blazed up and filled the room with warm light, I noticed that the snarl faded out and she sat watching the old lady with wondering eyes. She went to her room for a moment, but soon came back to sit by the fire and watch the sweet-faced old lady “play hands.” On the other side of the fireplace, silent and strong, her husband sat watching his wife with eyes half closed under his thick, bushy eyebrows.