508 Letters from the United Stales of North America. [Mat, 



for " public hxxmlWsXion, fasting, and prayer." It seldom happens, how- 

 ever, though in each of the states, in each of the six, or the twenty-four, 

 one day is put by, in this way, for the purpose of prayer and fasting, 

 that any two states agree upon the same day ; so that unless it be by 

 the special recommendation of the president, whose power goes only to 

 the issuing of a printed suggestion, which may or may not be followed, 

 as the people think proper, no such thing as a national or general fast is 

 known to the Americans. The church has nothing to do with the 

 affair in any case. It is altogether a matter of civil recommendation 

 from the governor of the state, or president of the United States. 

 N. B. I mean that for a pun. 



Originally these days were strictly observed : nobody ventured either 

 to eat or drink, from the rising of the sun, literally until the going down 

 of the same. The whole time was passed in religious exercises. They 

 vfere the inventions of a hardy, upright, stern people, to propitiate a 

 Being, whom they knew chiefly as the God of Battles— the God with a 

 red right-arm ; and were observed, while their garments were stiffening 

 Tyith blood, and all the red heathen were about them — observed with 

 unqualified, unrelenting austerity. Any departure in one jot, or tittle, 

 under any excuse, by any of these people, would have been regarded as 

 a forfeiture of God's protection for ever and ever — unless it were 

 speedily and bitterly atoned for. 



Such was the original meaning, and such the observance of the fasting 

 and prayer-day, among the true Yankees, up to the termination of their 

 struggle for independence — nay, up to a much later period. It is no 

 longer so — on the day of public humiliation, fasting, and prayer now, the 

 people neither humble themselves, nor go without food, nor pray. It is 

 indeed, a sort of bragging festival — a day set aside by authority for se- 

 rious and haughty gasconade. The preachers give their flocks a political 

 speech a piece ; wherein it is lawful for every one to show which side 

 he is on, to abuse all the governments of the earth, not excepting liis 

 own, if so it seemeth to him good, and to prove that America is the 

 '' land of the brave, and the home of the free" after all. 



A day being established for adversity, a day of fasting and prayer, 

 it was thought proper to set aside another day for prosperity, a 

 d^y of thanksgiving and prayer throughout all the land, after the labours 

 of the year were over, and the harvest gathered in. So thanksgiving 

 days followed another sort of strange festival, half serious, half joke, 

 partly religious, partly political, and partly, I should say, profane. It is 

 chiefly confined, however, in the celebration, to the New England states 

 — ^and is never heard of elsewhere, I am told, except in the church. It is 

 another day, on which all the people of the north, afler hearing a poli- 

 tical sermon, fall to, and eat of the fat of the land, as their brethren of 

 the south do, at Christmas, until they are hardly able to see out of their 

 eyes — out of their own eyes, or into the eyes of anybody else. The 

 New England people, or Yankee people, or thanksgiving people, as they 

 might be called with much propriety, pay little or no attention to Christ- 

 mas, except where they happen to be, as a multitude are in the larger 

 towns, members of the Protestant Episcopal Church ; when they eat as 

 they would, in yom- country, a better dinner than usual — if they can 

 get it. 



Then they have two political rejoicing days — one of which grew out 

 of the old notion about fasting and prayer, mixed up with a little rf the 



