Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we
Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat
saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old
pump looks than it used to. Bless the day. President Roosevelt gives
it to us. We hear some talk of the Puritans, but don't just remember
who they were. Bet we can lick 'em, anyhow, if they try to land
again. Plymouth Rocks? Well, that sounds more familiar. Lots of us
have had to come down to hens since the Turkey Trust got its work
in. But somebody in Washington is leaking out advance information
to 'em about these Thanksgiving proclamations.

The big city east of the cranberry bogs has made Thanksgiving Day an
institution. The last Thursday in November is the only day in the
year on which it recognizes the part of America lying across the
ferries. It is the one day that is purely American. Yes, a day of
celebration, exclusively American.

And now for the story which is to prove to you that we have
traditions on this side of the ocean that are becoming older at a
much rapider rate than those of England are--thanks to our git-up
and enterprise.

Stuffy Pete took his seat on the third bench to the right as you
enter Union Square from the east, at the walk opposite the fountain.
Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had taken his seat there
promptly at 1 o'clock. For every time he had done so things had
happened to him--Charles Dickensy things that swelled his waistcoat
above his heart, and equally on the other side.

But to-day Stuffy Pete's appearance at the annual trysting place
seemed to have been rather the result of habit than of the yearly
hunger which, as the philanthropists seem to think, afflicts the
poor at such extended intervals.

Certainly Pete was not hungry. He had just come from a feast
that had left him of his powers barely those of respiration and
locomotion. His eyes were like two pale gooseberries firmly imbedded
in a swollen and gravy-smeared mask of putty. His breath came
in short wheezes; a senatorial roll of adipose tissue denied a
fashionable set to his upturned coat collar. Buttons that had been
sewed upon his clothes by kind Salvation fingers a week before flew
like popcorn, strewing the earth around him. Ragged he was, with a
split shirt front open to the wishbone; but the November breeze,
carrying fine snowflakes, brought him only a grateful coolness.
For Stuffy Pete was overcharged with the caloric produced by a
super-bountiful dinner, beginning with oysters and ending with plum
pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the roast turkey and
baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and ice cream in
the world. Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed