In order to celebrate Thanksgiving Day in the popular fashion, one would need to keep books and strike a balance of good and evil. Let me try this plan. First, there is the orchard. The frost killed most of the blossoms; there was a plague of green aphids in the spring; over half of the apples we have are scabby and deformed. Wow! If I were depending on that orchard for my happiness Thanksgiving Day would be a day of gloom. But let us look at the other side of the ledger. We have sold our apples for a topnotch price; we are getting more for our thirds than people used to get for their firsts; we even have a chance to sell our culls at a good price to a vinegar factory; the indications are that after all the orchard will yield a larger cash return than in any year of its existence, except last year, when we had a bumper crop of clean fruit and got top prices. Looking at things in that way I guess I can squeeze out a little thankfulness for the 20th after all. Then there is the young orchard. First let me grumble. The young trees came late in the spring; they were all dried out, and wise people said they would not grow; I was so late getting them planted and getting the ground thoroughly cultivated, that I did not get the corn planted between the rows until the middle of June. Now let us look at the other side. Over ninety per cent of the trees grew and put out a strong growth. The nurserymen did not ask to be paid except for those that grew. The corn escaped the frost and ripened splendidly. It is now being husked, and is proving to be the best crop of corn that has been on the farm in years. Tut, Tut! It looks as if I would eat those ducks in a cheerful spirit after all.
There are times when I think that a spirit of thankfulness is born in one rather than cultivated. When looking at things in this way I find it profitable to study the animals on the place. Somehow they seem to be very human in their emotions.
Their feelings are not complicated by efforts at reasoning, and in their every day conduct they reveal their true spirits most amazingly. Take the Red Cow for instance. Nothing seems to discourage her. She is too full of ambition to grumble about anything. If she doesn't manage to steal a march on me to-day she is quite sure that she will be able to do it to-morrow, and that keeps her in a constantly cheerful frame of mind. This year she had set her heart on getting into the corn field which was just across the fence from the pasture, but never once did she find an open gate or a break in the fence. She saw it grow from the first green sprouts to matured corn and never got a bite. It is now in the shock and being husked, but she still stretches her neck over the fence in the same hopeful way. She is going to get a feed out of that field before the year is out or know the reason why. Even if she doesn't manage it before the stalks are hauled in she'll find a gate open before the snow falls, and dig up the roots that were left by the hoe before she will give up her purpose. A cow like that is really an inspiration on the farm.
She was born that way and life always looks bright to her, because she always has something to hope for. Now, with the new cow, the one I bought, the case is entirely different. She must have come into the world feeling discouraged. She has faith in nothing, hopes for nothing, and is always in a mournful frame of mind. Though she gets all the pumpkins she can eat and a good bunch of corn stalks every night, she simply can't cheer up. When we open the pasture gate the Red Cow makes a rush for the stable and gets into the wrong stall and eats all she can of some other cow's feed before she is driven to her place. But the new cow stands mournfully in the pasture. It is quite true that there were pumpkins last night and the night before and many nights before that, but she knows there will be none to-night and she bawls dismally at the thought. Finally some one has to go out into the field and drive her in, and when she gets to her stall she no sooner starts to eat than she looks over at what the other cows are having, and as well as she can with her mouth full, bawls complainingly that she didn't get as much as the rest, or that her pumpkins are not as yellow as the others. There is no satisfying her because she was born that way. It'll be the same on the 20th of October as on all other days. I wonder how many people in the country will be like her? As for me, I think I'll put a pumpkin just beyond the red cow's reach and cultivate a cheerful spirit while watching the hopeful way she will go after it.