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 upon the
world with after-dinner contempt.
The meal had been an unexpected one. He was passing a red brick mansion
near the beginning of Fifth avenue, in which lived two old ladies of
ancient family and a reverence for traditions. They even denied the
existence of New York, and believed that Thanksgiving Day was declared
solely for Washington Square. One of their traditional habits was to
station a servant at the postern gate with orders to admit the first
hungry wayfarer that came along after the hour of noon had struck, and
banquet him to a finish. Stuffy Pete happened to pass by on his way to
the park, and the seneschals gathered him in and upheld the custom of
the castle.
After Stuffy Pete had gazed straight before him for ten minutes he was
conscious of a desire for a more varied field of vision. With a
tremendous effort he moved his head slowly to the left. And then his
eyes bulged out fearfully, and his breath ceased, and the rough-shod
ends of his short legs wriggled and rustled on the gravel.
For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth avenue toward his bench.
Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come there
and found Stuffy Pete on his bench. That was a thing that the Old
Gentleman was trying to make a tradition of. Every Thanksgiving Day for
nine years he had found Stuffy there, and had led him to a restaurant
and watched him eat a big dinner. They do those things in England
unconsciously. But this is a young country, and nine years is not so
bad. The Old Gentleman was a staunch American patriot, and considered
himself a pioneer in American tradition. In order to become picturesque
we must keep on doing one thing for a long time without ever letting it
get away from us. Something like collecting the weekly dimes in
industrial insurance. Or cleaning the streets.
The Old Gentleman moved, straight and stately, toward the Institution
that he was rearing. Truly, the annual feeding of Stuffy Pete was
nothing national in its character, such as the Magna Charta or jam for
breakfast was in England. But it was a step. It was almost feudal. It
showed, at least, that a Custom was not impossible to New
Y—ahem!—America.
The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in
black, and wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won’t stay on
your nose. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last year,
and he seemed to make more use of his big, knobby cane with the crooked
handle.
As his established benefactor came up Stuffy wheezed and shuddered like
some woman’s over-fat pug when a street dog bristles up at him. He
would have flown, but all the skill of Santos-Dumont could not have
separated him from his bench. Well had the myrmidons of the two old
ladies done their work.
“Good morning,” said the Old Gentleman. “I am glad to perceive that the
vicissitudes of another year have spared you to move in health about
the beautiful world. For that blessing alone this day of thanksgiving
is well proclaimed to each of us. If you will come with me, my man, I
will provide you with a dinner that should make your physical being
accord with the mental.”
That is what the old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving Day
for nine years. The words themselves almost formed an Institution.
Nothing could be compared with them except the Declaration of
Independence. Always before they had been music in Stuffy’s ears. But
now he looked up at the Old Gentleman’s face with tearful agony in his
own. The fine snow almost sizzled when it fell upon his perspiring
brow. But the Old Gentleman shivered a little and turned his back to
the wind.
Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman spoke his speech
rather sadly. He did not know that it was because he was wishing every
time that he had a son to succeed him. A son who would come there after
he was gone—a son who would stand proud and strong before some
subsequent Stuffy, and say: “In memory of my father.” Then it would be
an Institution.
But the Old Gentleman had no relatives. He lived in rented rooms in one
of the decayed old family brownstone mansions in one of the quiet
streets east of the park. In the winter he raised fuchsias in a little
conservatory the size of a steamer trunk. In the spring he walked in
the Easter parade. In the summer he lived at a farmhouse in the New
Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker armchair, speaking of a butterfly,
the ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find some day. In the
autumn he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old Gentleman’s
occupations.
Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, stewing and helpless in
his own self-pity. The Old Gentleman’s eyes were bright with the
giving-pleasure. His face was getting more lined each year, but his
little black necktie was in as jaunty a bow as ever, and the linen was
beautiful and white, and his gray mustache was curled carefully at the
ends. And then Stuffy made a noise that sounded like peas bubbling in a
pot. Speech was intended; and as the Old Gentleman had heard the sounds
nine times before, he rightly construed them into Stuffy’s old formula
of acceptance.
“Thankee, sir. I’ll go with ye, and much obliged. I’m very hungry,
sir.”
The coma of repletion had not prevented from entering Stuffy’s mind the
conviction that he was the basis of an Institution. His Thanksgiving
appetite was not his own; it belonged by all the sacred rights of
established custom, if not, by the actual Statute of Limitations, to
this kind old gentleman who bad preempted it. True, America is free;
but in order to establish tradition some one must be a repetend—a
repeating decimal. The heroes are not all heroes of steel and gold. See
one here that wielded only weapons of iron, badly silvered, and tin.
The Old Gentleman led his annual protégé southward to the restaurant,
and to the table where the feast had always occurred. They were
recognized.
“Here comes de old guy,” said a waiter, “dat blows dat same bum to a
meal every Thanksgiving.”
The Old Gentleman sat across the table glowing like a smoked pearl at
his corner-stone of future ancient Tradition. The waiters heaped the
table with holiday food—and Stuffy, with a sigh that was mistaken for
hunger’s expression, raised knife and fork and carved for himself a
crown of imperishable bay.
No more valiant hero ever fought his way through the ranks of an enemy.
Turkey, chops, soups, vegetables, pies, disappeared before him as fast
as they could be served. Gorged nearly to the uttermost when he entered
the restaurant, the smell of food had almost caused him to lose his
honor as a gentleman, but he rallied like a true knight. He saw the
look of beneficent happiness on the Old Gentleman’s face—a happier look
than even the fuchsias and the ornithoptera amphrisius had ever brought
to it—and he had not the heart to see it wane.
In an hour Stuffy leaned back with a battle won. “Thankee kindly, sir,”
he puffed like a leaky steam pipe; “thankee kindly for a hearty meal.”
Then he arose heavily with glazed eyes and started toward the kitchen.
A waiter turned him about like a top, and pointed him toward the door.
The Old Gentleman carefully counted out $1.30 in silver change, leaving
three nickels for the waiter.
They parted as they did each year at the door, the Old Gentleman going
south, Stuffy north.
Around the first corner Stuffy turned, and stood for one minute. Then
he seemed to puff out his rags as an owl puffs out his feathers, and
fell to the sidewalk like a sunstricken horse.
When the ambulance came the young surgeon and the driver cursed softly
at his weight. There was no smell of whiskey to justify a transfer to
the patrol wagon, so Stuffy and his two dinners went to the hospital.
There they stretched him on a bed and began to test him for strange
diseases, with the hope of getting a chance at some problem with the
bare steel.
And lo! an hour later another ambulance brought the Old Gentleman. And
they laid him on another bed and spoke of appendicitis, for he looked
good for the bill.
But pretty soon one of the young doctors met one of the young nurses
whose eyes he liked, and stopped to chat with her about the cases.
“That nice old gentleman over there, now,” he said, “you wouldn’t think
that was a case of almost starvation. Proud old family, I guess. He
told me he hadn’t eaten a thing for three days.”