of its best-beloved illustrations of the absolute power of faith. To a
faithless world he made a proposal, and the world did not hear it. To
that faithless world he made it again and again, and at last roused the
world to ridicule it and to contradict it. To the same faithless world
he still made it year after year; and at last the world said that,
when it was ready, it would try if he were right; to which his only
reply is that he is ready now, that the world must send him now on the
expedition which shall show whether he is right or wrong. The world,
tired of his importunity, consents, unwillingly enough, that he shall
try the experiment. He tries it; he succeeds; and the world turns round
and welcomes him with a welcome which it cannot give to a conqueror.
In a moment the grandeur of his plans is admitted, their success is
acknowledged, and his place is fixed as one of the great men of history.
Give me white paper!
The sheet you use is black and rough with smears
Of sweat and grime and fraud and blood and tears,
Crossed with the story of men's sins and fears,
Of battle and of famine all those years
When all God's children have forgot their birth
And drudged and fought and died like beasts of earth.
Give me white paper!
One storm-trained seaman listened to the word;
What no man saw he saw, and heard what no man heard.
For answer he compelled the sea
To eager man to tell
The secret she had kept so well;
Left blood and woe and tyranny behind,
Sailing still West that land newborn to find,
For all mankind the unstained page unfurled,
Where God might write anew the story of the world.
_Edward Everett Hale_
[Illustration: Columbus
"Admiral at the Helm"]
The fame of Columbus is not local or limited. It does not belong to
any single country or people. It is the proud possession of the whole
civilized world. In all the transactions of history there is no act
which for vastness and performance can be compared with the discovery
of the continent of America, "the like of which was never done by any
man in ancient or in later times."
_James Grant Wilson_
With boldness unmatched, with faith in the teachings of science and
of revelation immovable, with patience and perseverance that knew no
weariness, with superior skill as a navigator unquestioned, and with
a lofty courage unrivaled in the history of the race, Columbus sailed
from Palos on the 3d of August, with three vessels, the largest (his
flagship) of only ninety feet keel, and provided with four masts, eight
anchors, and sixty-six seamen. Passing the Canaries and the blazing
peak of Teneriffe, he pushed westward into the "sea of darkness," in
defiance of the fierce dragons with which superstition had peopled it,
and the prayers and threats of his mutinous seamen, and on the 12th of
October landed on one of the Bahama Islands.
_Benson J. Lossing_
COLUMBUS[B]
[B] From complete works of Joaquin Miller, published by the Harr Wagner
Publishing Company of San Francisco.
Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: "Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Admiral, speak; what shall I say?"
"Why, say 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'"
"My men grow mutinous day by day;
My men grow ghastly wan and weak."
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
"What shall I say, brave Admiral, say,
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?"
"Why, you shall say at break of day,
'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'"
They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
Until at last the blanched mate said:
"Why, now not even God would know
Should I and all my men fall dead.
These very winds forget their way,
For God from these dread seas is gone.
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say--"
He said: "Sail on! sail on! and on!"
They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:
"This mad sea shows his teeth tonight.
He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
He lifts his teeth, as if to bite!
Brave Admiral, say but one good word;
What shall we do when hope is gone?"
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
"Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!"
Then pale and worn, he paced his deck,
And peered through darkness. Ah, that night,
Of all dark nights! And then a speck--
A light! A light! At last a light!
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!
It grew to be Time's burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
Its grandest lesson: "Oh! sail on!"
_Joaquin Miller_
He failed. He reached to grasp Hesperides,
To track the foot-course of the sun, that flies
Toward some far western couch, and watch its rise--
But fell on unknown sand-reefs, chains, disease.
He won. With splendid daring, from the sea's
Hard, niggard fist he plucked the glittering prize,
And gave a virgin world to Europe's eyes,
Where gold dust choked the streams, and spice the breeze.
He failed fulfillment of the task he planned,
And drooped a weary head on empty hand,
Unconscious of the vaster deed he'd done;
But royal legacy to Ferdinand
He left--a key to doorways gilt with sun--
And proudest title of "World-father" won!
_George W. W. Houghton_
With all the visionary fervor of his imagination, its fondest dreams
fell short of the reality. He died in ignorance of the real grandeur of
his discovery. Until his last breath, he entertained the idea that he
had merely opened a new way to the old resorts of opulent commerce, and
had discovered some of the wild regions of the East.... What visions of
glory would have broke upon his mind, could he have known that he had
indeed discovered a new continent, equal to the whole of the old world
in magnitude, and separated by two vast oceans from all of the earth
hitherto known by civilized man; and how would his magnanimous spirit
have been consoled, amidst the chills of age and cares of penury, the
neglect of a fickle public, and the injustice of an ungrateful king,
could he have anticipated the splendid empires which were to spread
over the beautiful world he had discovered, and the nations, and
tongues, and languages, which were to fill its lands with his renown,
and to revere and bless his name to the latest posterity!
_Washington Irving_
ON A PORTRAIT OF COLUMBUS
Was this his face, and these the finding eyes
That plucked a new world from the rolling seas?
Who, serving Christ, whom most he sought to please,
Willed the great vision till he saw arise
Man's other home and earthly paradise--
His early thought since first with stalwart knees
He pushed the boat from his young olive trees,
And sailed to wrest the secret of the skies.
He on the waters dared to set his feet,
And through believing planted earth's last race.
What faith in man must in our new world beat,
Thinking how once he saw before his face
The west and all the host of stars retreat
Into the silent infinite of space!
_George Edward Woodberry_
Of no use are the men who study to do exactly as was done before, who
can never understand that today is a new day. There never was such
a combination as this of ours, and the rules to meet it are not set
down in any history. We want men of original perception and original
action, who can open their eyes wider than to a nationality--namely, to
considerations of benefit to the human race--can act in the interest of
civilization; men of elastic, men of moral mind, who can live in the
moment and take a step forward. Columbus was no backward-creeping crab,
nor was Martin Luther, nor John Adams, nor Patrick Henry, nor Thomas
Jefferson; and the Genius or Destiny of America is no log or sluggard,
but a man incessantly advancing, as the shadow on the dial's face, or
the heavenly body by whose light it is marked.
_Ralph Waldo Emerson_
ADDRESS TO AMERICA
(_From a Commencement Poem, Dartmouth College. 1872_)
As a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
One song, America, before I go,
I'd sing, o'er all the rest, with trumpet sound,
For thee, the Future.
Sail--sail thy best, Ship of Democracy!
Of value is thy freight--'tis not the Present only,
The Past is also stored in thee!
Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone--
Not of thy western continent alone;
Earth's résumé entire floats on thy keel, O Ship--
Is steadied by thy spars.
With thee Time voyages in trust,
The antecedent nations sink or swim with thee;
With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars,
Thou bears't the other continents;
Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant,
Steer, steer with good strong hand and wary eye--
O helmsman--thou carryest great companions,
Venerable, priestly Asia sails this day with thee,
And royal, feudal Europe sails with thee.
_Walt Whitman_
AMERICA
O mother of a mighty race,
Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!
The elder dames, thy haughty peers,
Admire and hate thy blooming years;
With words of shame
And taunts of scorn they join thy name....
They know not, in their hate and pride,
What virtues with thy children bide;
How true, how good, thy graceful maids
Make bright, like flowers, the valley shades;
What generous men
Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen.
What cordial welcomes greet the guest
By thy lone rivers of the West;
How faith is kept, and truth revered,
And man is loved and God is feared,
In woodland homes,
And where the ocean border foams.
There's freedom at thy gates, and rest
For earth's down-trodden and opprest;
A shelter for the hunted head;
For the starved laborer toil and bread.
Power, at thy bounds,
Stops, and calls back his baffled hounds.
O fair young mother! on thy brow
Shall sit a nobler grace than now.
Deep in the brightness of thy skies
The thronging years in glory rise,
And, as they fleet,
Drop strength and riches at thy feet.
Thine eye, with every coming hour,
Shall brighten, and thy form shall tower;
And when thy sisters, elder born,
Would brand thy name with words of scorn,
Before thy eye
Upon their lips the taunt shall die.
_William Cullen Bryant_
THE WESTERN LAND
Great Western land, whose mighty breast
Between two oceans finds its rest,
Begirt by storms on either side,
And washed by strong Pacific tide.
The knowledge of thy wondrous birth
Gave balance to the rounded earth;
In sea of darkness thou didst stand,
Now first in light, great Western land.
In thee the olive and the vine
Unite with hemlock and with pine;
In purest white the southern rose
Repeats the spotless northern snows.
Around thy zone a belt of maize
Rejoices in the sun's hot rays;
And all that Nature could command
She heaped on thee, great Western land.
Great Western land, whose touch makes free,
Advance to perfect liberty,
Till right shall make thy sov'reign might,
And every wrong be crushed from sight.
Behold thy day, thy time is here;
Thy people great, with naught to fear.
God hold thee in His strong right hand,
My well beloved Western land.
_Caroline Hazard_
OUR NATIONAL IDEALS[C]
[C] Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton
Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.
Foremost among the ideals which have characterized our national life
is the spirit of self-reliance. The very first chapter of our national
history records the story of a man, who arose from among the toilers
of his time, and whom eighteen years of disappointed hopes could
not dismay. It tells how this man, holding out the promise of a new
dominion, at last overcame the opposition of royal courtiers, and
secured the tardy support of reluctant rulers. And when, at Palos,
Columbus flung to the breeze the sails of his frail craft, and ventured
upon that unknown ocean from which, according to the belief of his age,
there was no hope of return, he displayed the chief characteristic of
the American people--the spirit of self-reliance.
What is this spirit? Emerson has expressed it in a sentence: "We will
walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak
our own minds." This was the spirit which animated that little group
of colonists who preferred the unknown hardships of the new world
to the certain tyranny of the old; who chose to break old ties, to
brave the sea, to face the loneliness and perils of life in a strange
land--a land of difficulties and dangers, but a land of liberty and
opportunity....
In order that our country may continue this proud record of
self-reliance, each one of us has a special obligation. Every
citizen in his individual life should live up to the same ideal of
self-reliance. The young citizen who relies on himself, who does honest
work in school, never cheating or shirking, who is always, ready to do
a little more than is actually required of him, who thinks for himself,
acts rightly because he loves right actions--such a citizen is doing
his part in helping to achieve our national ideal of self-reliance.
_William Backus Guitteau_
I believe in my country. I believe in it because it is made up of my
fellow-men--and myself. I can't go back on either of us and be true
to my creed. If it isn't the best country in the world it is partly
because I am not the kind of a man that I should be.
_Charles Stelzle_
BIBLIOGRAPHY
See Bibliography at end of monograph.
THANKSGIVING DAY
Last Thursday in November
For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!
For blue of stream and blue of sky;
For pleasant shade of branches high;
For fragrant air and cooling breeze;
For beauty of the blooming trees,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!
_Ralph Waldo Emerson_
THANKSGIVING DAY
ROY L. SHAFFER, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, NEWARK
Among our national holidays Thanksgiving should be a red letter day.
We need these days so that the modern tendency of reducing all days to
the same mediocre level may be overcome. Such days, when contrasted
with common school days, show a wonderful stimulation. Hence it is
urged that the celebration of Thanksgiving take on the aspect of the
play-festival. The play-festival will have a potent effect on the
audience and the actors. The audience will be composed for the most
part of the school body and on this body the festival program will have
a unifying effect. For this reason it is further urged that an entire
grade, or perhaps a group of grades, be employed to render the program.
Such a rendition will be treated as a contribution from a part to the
whole.
The festival to be effective must bind the entire school into one
social group. The response of the audience will be complementary and
the spirit and the pride of the school will give forth inspiration to
the actor and the audience. The performer must make others feel what he
knows, and thus his learning becomes intensified. The result is that
the play-festival has two high values, the social and the educational.
The essential problem which arises, and which must be answered by every
teacher, is, "What shall be done to provide a good program, and how
shall it be done?" The answer will come from a careful survey of the
needs, capacities, and make-up of each individual or group of pupils.
The answer includes the utilization of the dramatic instinct, i. e.,
the play instinct, which finds expression through singing, speaking
and dancing. The successful festival must be well organized, and
this organization must be effected according to a suitable program.
(1) The history of the day must be clearly brought to the attention
of the pupils. (2) There should be a committee appointed to have
supervision of the arranging of the festival. (3) A program full of
content should-be arranged. (4) What constitutes the proper program for
a Thanksgiving festival should have the careful thought of those in
charge. The children should be actual factors in planning the program,
as well as in presenting it.
In order that Thanksgiving Day may be celebrated in an appropriate
manner it is necessary that its history be fully comprehended by the
entire school. Teachers of all grades should use the historic material
that will meet the needs and capacities of their pupils. This material
should be correlated with as much of the regular school work as may
seem advisable. It is essential that the entire school fully appreciate
the historic foundations of the day, so that they may comprehend the
setting which has so much to do with this holiday. Furthermore, a full
comprehension of the history as a background for this festival will
stimulate the school audience, so that they will receive from the
program those things which we believe they ought to receive from the
celebration.
HISTORY
The following extracts relative to the history of Thanksgiving have
been selected because they are exceptionally interesting; they show
that traditionally the celebration of this holiday is truly American;
they also give hints as to the wealth of material that may be woven
into a program for the play-festival.
The first year of the Pilgrim settlement, in spite of that awful winter
when nearly half of their number perished, had been comparatively
successful. The Pilgrims had planted themselves well, and it is easy
to understand why this fact should have appealed to the mind of their
governor, William Bradford, as an especial reason for proclaiming a
season of thanksgiving. The exact date is not certain, but from the
records we learn that it was an open air feast. It is evident that
it must have occurred in that lovely period of balmy, calm, cool
air and soft sunshine which is called Indian Summer, and which may
be considered to range between the latter week of October and the
latter week of November. It came at the end of the year's harvest. In
confirmation, let us quote from the writing of Edward Winslow, thrice
governor of the Pilgrims:
"Our corn did prove well; and, God be praised, we had a good increase
of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good. Our harvest being
gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling that so we might
after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the
fruit of our labors."
We learn that as a result of this hunting expedition they had many
wild turkeys, which the women probably stuffed with beechnuts, and
they brought home wood pigeons and partridges in abundance. But, it
seems, they must have lacked deer, since the Indians, with their king,
Massasoit, volunteered to go out and bring in the venison.
One noteworthy fact is the relations that existed between the Pilgrims
and the Indians. At this first Thanksgiving feast King Massasoit and
ninety of his warriors were present. They entered heartily into the
preparations of thanksgiving. What a cheerful spectacle it must have
been to see the Indian guests appearing, carrying a many branched
buck or a pretty doe, possibly hung across the stalwart shoulders of
some giant red man? Shall one doubt that the Pilgrim gravity was for
a moment dispelled, when the Indians approached with their delicious
contribution to the feast? Can't we hear the welcoming cheer that arose
from the throats of those Englishmen, or the clapping of the hands of
the younger women as those Indian athletes entered the camp? It is also
recorded that from their Indian guests the Pilgrims received clams,
oysters, fish and vegetables. What a feast this must have been!
The warriors remained with the Pilgrims for several days, and contended
with them in various games or feats of strength and agility. Perhaps
Massasoit unbent from his kingly dignity to show how straight he
could send an arrow at some improvised target. Maybe some Puritan
maiden laughingly tried her hand on an Indian bow. Possibly, too,
in the military drill which Miles Standish with his famous regiment
of twenty gave, there was intention on the part of the stout little
warrior to show the Indian what a formidable foe the white man might
be if provoked. At any rate, the friendship, hallowed by thanksgiving
hospitality, continued unbroken for nearly half a century.
What a noble, inspiring picture is the history of this first
Thanksgiving Day--a picture of piety, of human brotherhood, and of
poetry, for which the universal heart of man, when realizing its
profound significance, must gladly and proudly give thanks.
For many years this autumnal "feast of ingathering" was merely an
occasional festival, as unexpected prosperity or hoped for aid in
adversity moved our Pilgrim fathers to a special act of praise. It
was not until after the Revolutionary War that this day took on a
national significance. George Washington issued the first proclamation
in 1795. This will be read by many with deep interest, especially in
view of the fact that some persons believe that a national Thanksgiving
proclamation is a recent invention in our country. After this date it
was only occasionally observed until 1863. It was our Civil War which
awakened our national conscience, and since that time every President
of the United States has issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation, which
has in turn been issued to the different states by their respective
governors.
Thanksgiving is a universal holiday; it is for all the people. As
heretofore, each year brings new households, enlarged families,
increased affections, comfortable homes, plentiful tables, abundant
harvests, a beneficent government, free schools, and religious liberty.
There is much to be grateful for in our national history. Whatever may
have been our sense of past duty, it is the privilege of all to thank
God that He has given us the unexpected and unsought for opportunity to
relieve much oppression and to extend the blessings of good government
and fair freedom to many millions of people.
It is a wonderful opportunity, and no people on the face of the globe
have a stricter sense of duty than our great country. We may be far
from perfect if tried by the highest standards, but where shall we find
a nation which less desires to rule, and desires to rule more justly,
giving liberty to all? We as a generation have lived to see what may
be the greatest epoch in the world's history. Truly the seeds of this
harvest were sown years ago by our Pilgrim fathers. For such mercies
what soul will not raise its thanksgiving to God? Let us as teachers
of the state of New Jersey teach our children these great truths, and
enter with an open mind and a willing heart into each Thanksgiving
festival, and let us all try to inculcate in the hearts of our pupils
this significant brotherhood.
THE FESTIVAL COMMITTEE
Let the history of this great Thanksgiving Feast be the background and
setting for your play-festival. Let it be the duty of teachers to see
that the program for this celebration is inspired by patriotism, by a
reverence for God, who has been most gracious to us as a people. For
social reasons, it will be well to let some particular grade prepare
the program for the festival. The other grades of the school will be in
the audience, and thus the whole school will be united into one large
social group. Before it is decided which grade shall be selected to
prepare the program the principal and teachers should meet and, after
talking over the preliminary plans, appoint the festival committee.
It is important that the proper kind of machinery for this festival
work be constructed. It will be the duty of this special committee to
keep in mind such objects of the play-festival as the promotion of a
keener appreciation and a more reverent remembrance of great events and
great men and women of our history; the promotion of a deep national
patriotism; the promotion of a sense of deep gratitude that we live
in such a bountiful and beautiful earth. The play-festival should
be looked upon as a means of moral, social, cultural and esthetic
education.