1448 
The  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
November  24,  1923 
Hope  Farm  Notes 
Part  I. 
As  I  go  about  the  world  I  find  people 
who  delight  in  taking  a  shot  at  the  Pil¬ 
grim  Fathers — the  real  inventors  of 
Thanksgiving!  I  cannot  make  out  just 
what  is  back  of  all  this  hatred.  These 
critics  buy  a  turkey  if  they  can  afford  it, 
and  sometimes  if  they  cannot,  and  they 
call  the  family  together  for  a  feast — if 
there  is  any  family  with  any  “tie  that 
binds” — but  they  do  not  like  the  Pilgrims ! 
Ihave  one  friend  in  particular  who  likes 
to  stand  with  his  back  to  the  open  fire 
and  express  himself  freely. 
“Your  Pilgrim  Fathers,”  he  says,  “were 
the  greatest  bluffers  that  ever  lived,  and 
the  most  successful  bluffers,  too.  The  en¬ 
tire  history  of  the  world  cannot  show  any 
greater  historical  bluff  than  that  started 
at  Plymouth.  Your  Plymouth  Rock 
friends  never  did  a  thing  that  was  su¬ 
perior  to  things  done  in  hundreds  of 
other  colonies,  but  they  were  good  adver¬ 
tisers,  and  got  their  names  into  history. 
Their  Thanksgiving  is  the  biggest  bluff 
of  all.  The  day  is  usually  gray  and  dis¬ 
mal.  The  air  is  filled  with  mist  and  sad¬ 
ness.  The  young  people  may  think  it  a 
day  of  joy,  but  any  man  of  middle  age 
knows  better.  It  is  the  saddest  day  of 
the  year  for  them,  but  what  bluffers  they 
are  as  they  unhinge  their  long,  serious 
faces  and  pretend  to  be  gay  and  thank¬ 
ful.  They  know  better.  You  can’t  tell 
me  of  an"  actual  case  where  a  purebred 
Yankee  ever  showed  any  genuine  feeling 
or  emotion  on  Thanksgiving  —  or  any 
other  day,  for  that  matter!” 
I  do  not  know  just  what  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  or  their  descendants  have  done 
to  this  man,  but  he  really  seems  to  be¬ 
lieve  just  what  he  says.  I  never  try  to 
argue  with  him,  any  more  than  I  would 
with  those  people  who  claim  that  Abra¬ 
ham  Lincoln  was  a  very  inferior  and 
much  over-rated  character — merely  the 
product  of  a  successful  historical  myth  or 
bluff.  What’s  the  use  of  arguing  over 
such  things?  When  my  friend  stops  for 
breath  I  only  say : 
“Say,  old  man,  eat  a  Baldwin  apple 
and  forget  it!” 
He  is  always  ready  to  eat  the  apple  at 
least ! 
*  *  *  *  * 
But  now,  while  argument  over  such 
things  is  useless,  we  may  all  find  some  ad¬ 
vantage  in  thinking  it  over.  We  shall 
find  that  we  are  all  inclined  to  make  snap 
judgments,  or  fail  to  show  any  real  judg¬ 
ment  at  all.  A  snap  judgment  means  a 
decision  from  insufficient  evidence.  We 
see  or  hear  one  side  of  a  thing,  and  make 
up  our  minds  without  bothering  with  any 
other  side.  The  revert  of  this  is  where 
we  decided  from  some  old  prejudice 
or  inherited  feeling  which  we  mistake  for 
argument.  My  friend  has  made  a  snap 
judgment  about  Thanksgiving,  yet  he  will 
claim  that  I  argue  from  prejudice  or  sec¬ 
tional  inheritance.  At  any  rate,  most  of 
us  are  guilty  of  one  or  both  forms  of  In¬ 
fluencing  the  mind.  I  thought  of  this  as  I 
went  to  bed  the  night  before  election.  It 
was  a  typical  “mean”  Jersey  night — for  I 
can  tell  you  that  while  Miss  New  Jersey 
can  put  more  happiness  into  her  smile  on 
a  fresh  June  day,  she  can  also  present 
the  meanest  and  most  discouraging  face 
in  bleak  November — if  she  really  tries. 
She  is  a  variable  character — and  therein 
lies  p-'rt  of  her  charm,  but  when  the  fog 
rises  up  from  the  salt  marsh  and  meets 
the  air  from  the  Delaware  River  on  the 
hills — well,  my  friend  is  at  his  best  in  his 
mental  picture  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers. 
When  this  dull,  cold,  raw  mist  comes  at 
election  time  the  Republicans  call  it 
“Democratic  weather,”  and  the  Demo¬ 
crats  cannot  find  any  name  strong  enough 
to  describe  it  properly.  There  was  not 
very  much  at  issue  in  our  local  election, 
but*  I  remember  thinking  as  I  went  off  to 
sleep  that  probably  not  over  15  per  cent 
of  our  voters  would  cast  a  really  inde¬ 
pendent  ballot.  About  all  that  most  of 
us  do  is  to  use  our  pencil  on  a  ballot 
which  has  been  selected  for  us.  We  know 
little  or  nothing  about  the  people  we  vote 
for,  and  having  voted  we  go  about  our 
business  and  leave  these  candidates  to  do 
as  they  like — or  more  likely  jump  when 
some  man  “higher  up”  pulls  a  string. 
And  like  thousands  of  other  voters.  I 
thought  this  out,  and  in  answer  to  the 
question  “What  are  we  going  to  do  about 
it?”  could  only  say  “I  guess  I’ll  go  to 
sleep.” 
It  was  nearly  one  o’clock  when  I  felt 
someone  pulling  at  me.  and  I  arousert 
with  a  start,  feeling  that  some  important 
event  had  started.  Mother  led  me  to  the 
window,  and  we  looked  out  upon  our 
neighbor’s  cornfield.  It  is  just  over  the 
stone  wall  from  our  peach  orchard.  The 
corn  had  been  cut  and  shocked.  There 
are  several  large  apple  trees  in  the  field, 
well  filled  with  fruit.  Out  among  the 
shocks  of  corn  w7ere  several  moving  lights. 
There  were  at  least  two  lanterns  and  a 
-flashlight.  They  moved  about  from  shock 
to  shock,  pausing  now  and  then  under  the 
apple  trees.  At  times  they  would  move 
off  toward  the  henhouse  and  then  come 
back  to  the  corn.  Now  and  then  we 
caught  the  dim  shadow  of  a  man  evident¬ 
ly  carrying  a  bag.  Here  was  all  the  evi¬ 
dence  of  a  gang  of  robbers  such .  as  we 
have  often  heard  of.  They  come  in  cars 
with  bags  and  boxes,  capture  anything 
they  can  find,  from  corn  to  chickens,  and 
are  off  in  their  cars  at  the  first  warning. 
This  gang  seemed  to  be  pulling  ears  of 
corn  from  the  shocks  and  filling  bags  with 
apples — and  we  were  silent  witnesses  of 
this  thieving.  What  should  we  do?  If 
Cherry-top  had  been  here  I  should  have 
had  him  put  blank  shells  in  his  shotgun, 
creep  up  to  the  edge  of  the  field  and  fire 
into  the  air.  Some  of  you  may  criticize 
me  for  not  firing  directly  at  those  lan¬ 
terns,  but  I  want  to  be  exactly  sure  of 
what  I  am  doing  before  1  take  any 
chance  on  shooting  a  man.  While  I  was 
hesitating ,  those  lanterns  grouped  to¬ 
gether  as  if  the  robbers  were  holding  some 
sort  of  consultation.  Then  they  quickly 
marched  to  the  road  with  their  burdens, 
piled  their  plunder  into  the  car  and 
moved  swiftly  away  down  the  road.  I 
went  back  to  bed,  not  very  well  satisfied 
with  the  part  we  had  played  in  watching 
the  robbery  and  letting  the  thieves  escape. 
Along  toward  noon  of  election  day,  as  we 
were  hauling  apples  down  from  the  or¬ 
chard,  two  men  from  the  next  farm 
stopped  in  to  see  us. 
“Well,  we  got  three  last  night !” 
“Three  what?” 
“Three  skunks— in  that  next  field !” 
The  mystery  was  explained !  It  wasn  t 
a  case  of  robbery  at  all.  We  had  not  been 
silent  observers  of  the  operations  of  a 
gang  of  Jersey  highwaymen.  They  were 
just  skunk  hunters,  going  from  shock  to 
shock,  with  a  dog.  It  was  an  entirely 
legitimate  business,  yet,  gazing  out 
through  the  darkness  with  minds  well 
filled  with  stories  of  midnight  attack  and 
hold-up,  we  had  thought  we  were  looking 
upon  a  real  crime!  Suppose  one  of  us 
had  gone  out  and  fired  into  that  company 
of  skunk  hunters?  As  Mother  and  I 
drove  to  the  polls  to  deposit  our  “honest 
ballot”  (without  knowing  just  how  hon¬ 
est  it  was)  we  smiled  at  each  other,  and 
were  thankful  that  we  did  not  act  on  one¬ 
sided  evidence  of  crime. 
*  *  *  *  * 
Now  the  truth  is  that  the  world  is  full 
of  honest  skunk  hunters.  Their  business 
may  not  always  be  pleasing  to  the  nose, 
yet  many  a  fine  lady  who  might  rate  the 
skunk  hunter  as  worse  than  a  thief  will 
display  the  dressed  fur  of  the  skunk  as 
proudly  as  her  ancestor,  many  genera¬ 
tions  removed,  displayed  his  fine  collec¬ 
tion  of  scalps.  Much  of  the  trouble  and 
prejudice  in  this  world  is  created  by  peo¬ 
ple  who  look  out  into  the  dark,  see  people 
engaged  in  some  work  which  they  cannot 
understand,  and  immediately  decide  that 
they  are  criminals,  just  because  they  have 
been  taught  to  think  that  any  person  out 
at  mysterious  work  must  be  a  rogue. 
That  is  what  ails  my  friend  who  rails  so 
at  the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  He  looks  back 
into  the  dim  shadows  of  history,  much  as 
we  looked  out  into  the  black  night,  and 
sees  shadowy  figures  doing  things  which 
he  cannot  quite  comprehend,  and  at  once 
classes  them  as  bluffers  and  frauds.  We 
all  do  too  much  of  that  ;  it’s  one  of  the 
great  troubles  with  society.  What  we 
call  “education”  ought  to  make  us  broad¬ 
er  and  less  inclined  to  brand  honest  skunk 
hunters  as  robbers  simply  from  what  we 
fail  to  see  in  the  darkness,  but  it  seems 
to  me  that  most  of  our  young  people  are 
just  about  as  headstrong  and  prejudiced 
as  we  are.  My  own  children  apparently 
have  less  patience  with  my  old-fashioned 
ideas  than  I  have  with  their  new  ones.  I 
realize  that  times  have  changed,  and  that 
habits  must  change  with  them,  while  my 
young  folks  fail  to  see  any  beauty  or  use 
in  “back  numbers.”  But  is  my  cynical 
friend  right  when  he  say  that  no  purebred 
Yankee  ever  showed  any  genuine  feeling 
or  emotion  on  Thanksgiving  Day?  I’ll 
say  he  is  wrong,  and  I  think  I  can 
prove  it. 
***** 
The  night  before  the  Thanksgiving  I 
speak  of  could  have  given  New  Jersey 
cards  and  spades  on  climate — if  I  may 
use  such  an  expression.  Dim,  sticky  and 
depressing  it  seemed  as  I  started  out  of 
my  uncle’s  yard  to  carry  the  milk  to 
Deacon  Porter.  He  took  only  one  pint  a 
day,  for  he  lived  alone  with  his  cousin, 
old  Mrs.  Leonard,  and  neither  of  them  be¬ 
lieved  in  the  vitamine  theory.  The  Por- 
( Continued  on  Page  1460) 
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Feb.  14,  1923 
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to  each  of  the  old  “STEWARTS,” 
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They  have  always  given  perfect 
satisfaction.  They  have  saved 
half  the  fuel.” 
C.  P.  HASKINS 
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