Great Blessings
“The season again approaches,” proclaimed the President in one of his proclaiming moods, “when it has been the custom for years to set apart a day of Thanksgiving for the blessings which the Giver of All Good and Perfect Gifts has bestowed upon us during the year. It is most becoming that we should do this, for the goodness and mercy of God, which have followed us through the year, deserve our grateful recognition and acknowledgment.
“Our fields have been abundantly productive, our industries have flourished, our commerce has increased, wages have been lucrative, and comfort and contentment have followed the undisturbed pursuit of honest toil. As we have prospered in material things, so have we also grown and expanded in things spiritual.
“Wherefore I hereby set aside Thursday, the twenty-eighth day of November, as a day of general thanksgiving and prayer, and I recommend that on that day the people shall cease from their daily work and in their homes and accustomed places of worship devoutly give thanks to the Almighty for the many and great blessings they have received, and seek His guidance that they may deserve a continuance of His favor.”
Myrtle Stewart, aged ten, asked her mother for more cranberry sauce.
“Oh, no, dear! You don’t want to get sick.”
“I won’t get sick.”
“You will if you have more cranberry sauce. Remember, you must leave room for pumpkin pie.”
“I don’t want pumpkin pie. I want more cranberry sauce.”
“Let her have it, Clara. It can’t hurt her.”
This was the elder Mrs. Stewart speaking, Clara’s mother-in-law.
“She shouldn’t eat any sweets at all. Doctor Fred says that’s what’s the matter with her stomach.”
“There’s nothing the matter with her stomach. How does Doctor Fred know? He never had any children of his own. When Tod and Harry were Myrtle’s age, I didn’t refuse them anything, and I can’t see that they’re any the worse for it.”
Tod was Clara’s husband and Harry her brother-in-law, who had gone away to Detroit five years ago and was doing well there as a hotel manager with the liquor concession, just for the hotel, not the entire city. His salary was a small part of his income, but his parents didn’t know this. His stomach and Tod’s were in such condition that they could digest nothing but gin, which had no connection, of course, with the fact that Mother Stewart had indulged them when they were Myrtle’s age.
During the first six years of the married life of Clara and Tod, the family Thanksgiving dinner had been at Harry’s house. It was bigger and the Harry Stewarts usually could afford a maid. Grace, Harry’s wife, had not allowed a hostess’ responsibilities to weigh her down. Mother Stewart had disapproved of her because she drank a little, smoked when she liked, and was childless, but her mother-in-law’s thinly veiled hostility amused her up to a certain point, and when that point was reached, she walked out on her guests, saying she had promised to play bridge awhile at the Browns’.
Clara neither smoked nor drank, and had brought Myrtle into the world. This had made her the preferred daughter-in-law, but only temporarily. Tod’s inability to hold a good job was his wife’s fault, and she was too strict with Myrtle. And Grace’s depravity was forgotten as soon as she and Harry moved to Detroit and Harry began making fifteen thousand a year, of which he sent home a hundred dollars every Christmas.
Grace had perhaps been wise not to have a child. A hotel was no place in which to bring one up. Besides, she was not strong—compared with Tunney.
This was the fifth Thanksgiving Father and Mother Stewart had come to Clara’s house. It was a habit now and they came without an invitation.
Clara, not blessed with a temperament like Grace’s, stood it as well as she could. At the end of the day she always wished she could drink enough gin to revive her spirits, but one small shot made her sick and she had to stay well to take care of Myrtle and Tod, both of whom invariably suffered a decline following a visit from the old people.
However, Clara would not have minded Thanksgiving if it had been the only day in the year when her mother-in-law and father-in-law swooped down on her. They dropped in three or four times a month, usually just before a meal, and Myrtle’s grandfather brought a particularly brutal brand of candy.
Worst of all, they had dropped in one evening in July, when Tod and Clara had left Myrtle at home alone while they attended the first show at the Gem. Their voices had awakened Myrtle and she had cried. No wonder, left alone without a light in the house.
“It isn’t sweet things that upset her,” asserted Mother Stewart now. “It’s nervousness. She isn’t over her fright and I doubt if she ever gets over it.”
“What fright?” said Tod.
“Waking up and finding herself alone in the dark.”
“That was nearly five months ago. And she wouldn’t have waked up if you hadn’t waked her.”
“I’m glad we did wake her. Almost anything could have happened. Tramps might have walked right in. They won’t stop at anything when they’re starving.”
“I think they’d stop at Myrtle,” said Tod. “She’s tough.”
“That’s a nice way for a father to speak of his child! A dear child like Myrtle!”
“Myrtle’s a dear child, all
