Thanksgiving At The Polls
A Thanksgiving Story
I
Frederick Dane was on his way towards what he called
his home. His home, alas, was but an indifferent attic
in one of the southern suburbs of Boston. He had been
walking; but he was now standing still, at the well-known
corner of Massachusetts and Columbus Avenues.
As often happens, Frederick Dane had an opportunity
to wait at this corner a quarter of an hour. As he
looked around him on the silent houses, he could not but
observe the polling-booth, which a watchful city
government had placed in the street, a few days before,
in preparation for the election which was to take place
three weeks afterward. Dane is of an inquiring temper,
and seeing that the polling-booth had a door and the door
had a keyhole, he tried in the keyhole a steel key which
he had picked up in Dock Square the day before. Almost
to his surprise, the key governed the lock at once, and
he found himself able to walk in.
He left the door wide open, and the gaslight
streaming in revealed to him the aspect of the cells
arranged for Australian voting. The rails were all in
their places, and the election might take place the very
next day. It instantly occurred to Dane that he might
save the five cents which otherwise he would have given
to his masters of the street railway, and be the next
morning three miles nearer his work, if he spent the
night in the polling-cabin. He looked around for a
minute or two, and found some large rolls of street
posters, which had been left there by some disappointed
canvasser the year before, and which had accompanied one
cell of the cabin in its travels. Dane is a prompt man,
and, in a minute more, he had locked the door behind him,
had struck a wax taper which he had in his cigar-box, had
rolled the paper roll out on the floor, to serve as a
pillow. In five minutes more, covered with his heavy
coat, he lay on the floor, sleeping as soundly as he had
slept the year before, when he found himself on the lee
side of an iceberg under Peary's command.
This is perhaps unnecessary detail, by way of saying
that this is the beginning of the arrangement which a
city, not very intelligent, will make in the next century
for unsettled people, whose own houses are not agreeable
to them. There exist in Boston at this moment three or
four hundred of the polling-booths,--nice little houses,
enough better than most of the peasantry of most of
Europe ever lived in. They are, alas, generally packed
up in lavender and laid away for ten months of the
year. But in the twentieth century we shall send them
down to the shores of islands and other places where
people like to spend the summer, and we shall utilize
them, not for the few hours of an election only, but all
the year round. This will not then be called
"Nationalism," it will be called "Democracy;" and that is
a very good name when it is applied to a very good thing.
Dane was an old soldier and an old seaman. He was
not troubled by disagreeable dreams, and in the morning,
when the street-cars began to travel, he was awaked a
little after sunrise, by their clatter on the corner. He
felt well satisfied with the success of his experiment,
and began on a forecast, which the reader shall follow
for a few weeks, which he thought, and thought rightly,
would tend to his own convenience, possibly to that of
his friends.
Dane telegraphed down to the office that he should be
detained an hour that morning, went out to his home of
the day before at Ashmont, paid his landlady her scot,
brought in with him his little possessions in a valise to
the office, and did not appear at his new home until
after nightfall.
He was then able to establish himself on the basis
which proved convenient afterwards, and which it is worth
while to explain to a world which is not too well housed.
The city had provided three or four chairs there, a
stove, and two tables. Dane had little literature, but,
as he was in the literary line himself, he did not
care for this so much; men who write books are not
commonly eager to read books which are worse than their
own. At a nine-cent window of a neighboring tinman's he
was able to buy himself the few little necessities which
he wanted for housekeeping. And not to detain the reader
too long upon merely fleshly arrangements, in the course
of a couple of hours of Tuesday evening and Wednesday
evening, he had fitted up his convenient if not pretty
bower with all that man requires. It was easy to buy a
mince pie or a cream cake, or a bit of boiled ham or
roast chicken, according as payday was near or distant.
One is glad to have a tablecloth. But if one have a
large poster warning people, a year before, that they
should vote the Prohibition ticket, one's conscience is
not wounded if this poster, ink down, takes the place
which a tablecloth would have taken under other
circumstances. If there is not much crockery to use,
there is but little to wash. And, in short, as well
trained a man of the world as Dane had made himself
thoroughly comfortable in his new quarters before the
week was over.
II
At the beginning Frederick's views were purely
personal, or, as the preachers say, selfish. Here was
an empty house, three miles nearer his work than his
hired attic was, and he had taken possession. But
conscience always asserts itself, and it was not long
before he felt that he ought to extend the benefits of
this new discovery of his somewhat further. It really
was a satisfaction to what the pulpits call a "felt
want" when as he came through Massachusetts Avenue on
Thursday evening, he met a boy and a girl, neither of
them more than ten years old, crying on the sidewalk.
Dane is sympathetic and fond of children. He stopped
the little brats, and satisfied himself that neither
had had any supper. He could not understand a word of
the language in which they spoke, nor could they
understand him. But kindness needs little spoken
language; and accordingly Frederick led them along to
his cabin, and after waiting, as he always did, a
minute or two, to be sure that no one was in sight, he
unlocked the door, and brought in his little
companions.
It was clear enough that the children were such waifs
and strays that nothing surprised them, and they readily
accepted the modest hospitalities of the position. Like
all masculine housekeepers, Frederick had provided three
times as much food as he needed for his own physical
wants, so that it was not difficult to make these
children happy with the pieces of mince pie and lemon pie
and cream cake and eclairs which were left from his
unknown festivals of the day before. Poor little things,
they were both cold and tired, and, before half an hour
was over, they were snugly asleep on and under a pile of
Prohibition posters.
III
Fortunately for Frederick Dane, for the nine years
before he joined Peary, he had lived in the city of
Bagdad. He had there served as the English interpreter
for the Caliph of that city. The Caliph did most of
his business at night, and was in the habit of taking
Mr. Dane with him on his evening excursions. In this
way Mr. Dane had made the somewhat intimate
acquaintance of Mr. Jaffrey, the private secretary of
the Caliph; and he had indeed in his own employment for
some time, a wide-awake black man, of the name of
Mezrour, who, for his "other place," was engaged as a
servant in the Caliph's household. Dane was thus not
unfamiliar with the methods of unexpected evening
visits; and it was fortunate for him that he was so.
The little children whom he had picked up, explained to
him, by pantomime which would have made the fortune of
a ballet-girl, that they were much more comfortable in
their new home than they had been in any other, and
that they had no wish to leave it. But by various
temptations addressed to them, in the form of barley
horses and dogs, and sticks of barber's candy, Dane,
who was of a romantic and enterprising disposition,
persuaded them to take him to some of their former
haunts.
These were mostly at the North End of Boston,
and he soon found that he needed all his
recollections of Bagdad for the purpose of conducting any
conversation with any of the people they knew best. In
a way, however, with a little broken Arabic, a little
broken Hebrew, a great deal of broken China, and many
gesticulations, he made acquaintance with two of their
compatriots, who had, as it seemed, crossed the ocean
with them in the same steerage. That is to say, they
either had or had not; but for many months Mr. Dane was
unable to discover which. Such as they were, however,
they had been sleeping on the outside of the upper attic
of the house in Salutation Alley where these children had
lodged, or not lodged, as the case might be, during the
last few days. When Mr. Dane saw what were called their
lodgings, he did not wonder that they had accepted pot-
luck with him.
It is necessary to explain all this, that the reader
may understand why, on the first night after the arrival
of these two children, the population of the polling-
booth was enlarged by the presence of these two Hebrew
compatriots. And, without further mystery, it may be as
well to state that all four were from a village about
nine hundred and twenty-three miles north of Odessa, in
the southern part of Russia. They had emigrated in a
compulsory manner from that province, first on account of
the utter failure of anything to eat there; second, on
account of a prejudice which the natives of that country
had contracted against the Hebrew race.
The two North End friends of little Ezra and Sarah
readily accepted the invitation of the two children to
join in the College Settlement at the corner of the two
avenues. The rules of the institution proved attractive,
and before a second week was well advanced ten light
excelsior mattresses were regularly rolled up every
morning as the different inmates went to their duties;
while, as evening closed in, eight cheerful companions
told stories around the hospitable board.
IV
It is no part of this little tale to follow, with Mr.
Stevenson's magic, or with that of the Arabian Nights,
the fortunes from day to day of the little circle.
Enough that men of Hebrew race do not prove lazy
anywhere. Dane, certainly, gave them no bad example.
The children were at once entered in a neighboring
school, where they showed the quickness of their race.
They had the advantage, when the week closed and began,
that they could attend the Sabbath school provided for
them by the Hebrews on Saturday and the several Sunday-
schools of the Parker Memorial, the Berkeley Temple,
and the other churches of the neighborhood. The day
before the election, Frederick Dane asked Oleg and
Vladimir to help him in bringing up some short boards,
which they laid on the trusses in the roof above them.
On the little attic thus prepared, they stored
their mattresses and other personal effects before the
great election of that year began. They had no
intention of interfering, even by a cup of cold coffee,
with the great wave of righteous indignation which, on
that particular day of that particular year, "swept
away, as by a great cosmic tidal flood, the pretences
and ambitions, etc., etc., etc." These words are cited
from Frederick Dane's editorial of the next morning, and
were in fact used by him or by some of his friends,
without variations, in all the cosmic changes of the
elections of the next six years.
V
But so soon as this election was well over, the country
and the city settled down, with what Ransom used to
call "amazin'" readiness to the new order, such as it
was. Only the people who "take up the streets"
detached more men than ever to spoil the pavement. For
now a city election was approaching. And it might be
that the pavers and ditchers and shovellers and
curbstone men and asphalt makers should vote wrong.
Dane and his settlement were well aware that after this
election they would all have to move out from their
comfortable quarters. But, while they were in, they
determined to prepare for a fit Thanksgiving to God,
and the country which makes provision so generous for
those in need. It is not every country, indeed,
which provides four hundred empty houses, every autumn,
for the convenience of any unlodged night-editor with a
skeleton key, who comes along.
He explained to his companions that a great festival
was near. They heard this with joy. He explained that
no work would be done that day,--not in any cigar-shop or
sweating-room. This also pleased them. He then, at some
length, explained the necessity of the sacrifice of
turkeys on the occasion. He told briefly how Josselyn
and the fathers shot them as they passed through the sky.
But he explained that now we shoot them, as one makes
money, not directly but indirectly. We shoot our
turkeys, say, at shooting-galleries. All this proved
intelligible, and Frederick had no fear for turkeys.
As for Sarah and Ezra, he found that at Ezra's boys'
club and at Sarah's girls' club, and each of her Sabbath-
school classes and Sunday-school classes, and at each of
his, it had been explained that on the day before
Thanksgiving they must come with baskets to places named,
and carry home a Thanksgiving dinner.
These announcements were hailed with satisfaction by
all to whom Dane addressed them. Everything in the
country was as strange to them as it would have been to
an old friend of mine, an inhabitant of the planet Mars.
And they accepted the custom of this holiday among the
rest. Oddly enough, it proved that one or two of them
were first-rate shots, and, by attendance at
different shooting-galleries, they brought in more than
a turkey apiece, as Governor Bradford's men did in 1621.
Many of them were at work in large factories, where it
was the custom of the house to give a roasted turkey and
a pan of cranberry sauce to each person who had been on
the pay-list for three months. One or two of them were
errand men in the market, and it was the practice of the
wholesale dealers there, who at this season become to a
certain extent retailers, to encourage these errand men
by presenting to each of them a turkey, which was
promised in advance. As for Dane himself, the
proprietors of his journal always presented a turkey to
each man on their staff. And in looking forward to his
Thanksgiving at the polls, he had expected to provide a
twenty-two pound gobbler which a friend in Vermont was
keeping for him. It may readily be imagined, then, that,
when the day before Thanksgiving came, he was more
oppressed by an embarrassment of riches than by any
difficulty on the debtor side of his account. He had
twelve people to feed, himself included. There were the
two children, their eight friends, and a young Frenchman
from Paris who, like all persons of that nationality who
are six months in this country, had found many enemies
here. Dane had invited him to dinner. He had arranged
that there should be plates or saucers enough for each
person to have two. And now there was to be a chicken-
pie from Obed Shalom, some mince pies and
Marlborough pies from the Union for Christian Work, a
turkey at each end of the board; and he found he should
have left over, after the largest computation for the
appetites of the visitors, twenty-three pies of different
structure, five dishes of cranberry sauce, three or four
boxes of raisins, two or three drums of figs, two roasted
geese and eleven turkeys. He counted all the turkeys as
roasted, because he had the promise of the keeper of the
Montgomery House that he would roast for him all the
birds that were brought in to him before nine o'clock on
Thanksgiving morning.
VI
Having stated all this on a list carefully written,
first in the English language and second in the
language of the Hebrews, Frederick called his fellow-
lodgers together earlier than usual on the evening
before Thanksgiving Day. He explained to them, in the
patois which they used together, that it would be
indecent for them to carry this supply of food farther
than next Monday for their own purposes. He told them
that the occasion was one of exuberant thanksgiving to
the God of heaven. He showed them that they all had
great reason for thanksgiving. And, in short, he made
three heads of a discourse which might have been
expanded by the most eloquent preacher in Boston
the next day, and would have well covered the twenty-
five minutes which the regulation would have required
for a sermon. He then said that, as they had been
favored with much more than they could use for their own
appetites, they must look up those who were not so well
off as themselves.
He was well pleased by finding that he was
understood, and what he said was received with applause
in the various forms in which Southern Russia applauds on
such occasions. As for the two children, their eyes were
wide open, and their mouths, and they looked their
wonder.
Frederick then proposed that two of their number
should volunteer to open a rival establishment at the
polling-booth at the corner of Gates Street and Burgoyne
Street, and that the company should on the next day
invite guests enough to make another table of twelve. He
proposed that the same course should be taken at the
corner of Shapleigh and Bowditch Streets, and yet again
at the booth which is at the corner of Curtis Avenue and
Quincy Street. And he said that, as time would press
upon them, they had better arrange to carry a part at
least of the stores to these places that evening. To
this there was a general assent. The company sat down to
a hasty tea, administered much as the Israelites took
their last meal in Egypt; for every man had on his long
frieze coat and his heavy boots, and they were eager for
the active work of Thanksgiving. For each the
stewards packed two turkeys in a basket, filled in
as far as they could with other stores, and Frederick
headed his procession.
It was then that he was to learn, for the first time,
that he was not the only person in Boston.
It was then that he found out that the revelation
made to one man is frequently made to many.
He found out that he was as wise as the next fellow,
but was no wiser; was as good as the next fellow, but was
no better; and that, in short, he had no special patent
upon his own undertaking,
The little procession soon arrived at the corner of
Shapleigh and Bowditch Streets. Whoever had made the
locks on the doors of the houses had been content to use
the same pattern for all. It proved, therefore, that the
key of No. 237 answered for No. 238, and it was not
necessary to open the door with the "Jimmy" which Simeon
had under his ulster.
But on the other hand, to Frederick's amazement, as
he threw the door open, he found a lighted room and a
long table around which sat twelve men, guised or
disguised in much the same way as those whom he had
brought with him. A few moments showed that another
leader of the people had discovered this vacant home a
few weeks before, and had established there another
settlement of the un-homed. As it proved, this gentleman
was a Mashpee Indian. He was, in fact, the member of the
House of Representatives from the town of Mashpee for the
next winter. Arriving in Boston to look for
lodgings, he, not unnaturally, met with a Mohawk, two
Dacotahs, and a Cherokee, who, for various errands, had
come north and east. A similarity of color, not to say
of racial relations, had established a warm friendship
among the five, and they had brought together gradually
twelve gentlemen of copper color, who had been residing
in this polling-booth since the second day after the
general election. Their fortune had not been unlike that
of Frederick and his friends, and at this moment they
were discussing the methods by which they might
distribute several brace of ducks which had been sent up
from Mashpee, a haunch of venison which had come down
from above Machias, and some wild turkeys which had
arrived by express from the St. Regis Indians of Northern
New York. At the moment of the arrival of our friends,
they were sending out two of their number to find how
they might best distribute thus their extra provender.
These two gladly joined in the little procession, and
all went together to the corner of Quincy Street and
Curtis Avenue. There a similar revelation was made, only
there was some difficulty at first in any real mutual
understanding. For here they met a dozen, more or less,
of French Canadians. These gentlemen had left their
wives and their children in the province of Quebec, and,
finding themselves in Boston, had taken possession of the
polling-booth, where they were living much more
comfortably than they would have lived at home.
They too had been well provided for Thanksgiving, both by
their friends at home and by their employers, and had
been questioning as to the distribution which they could
make of their supplies. Reinforced by four of their
number, the delegation in search of hungry people was
increased to fourteen in number, and with a certain
curiosity, it must be confessed, they went together to
try their respective keys on No. 311.
Opening this without so much as knocking at the door
to know if here they might not provide the "annex" or
"tender" which they wished to establish, they found, it
must be confessed without any amazement or amusement, a
company of Italians under the charge of one Antonio Fero,
who had also worked out the problem of cheap lodgings,
and had established themselves for some weeks here.
These men also had been touched, either by some priest's
voice or other divine word, with a sense of the duties of
the occasion, and were just looking round to know where
they might spread their second table. Five of them
joined the fourteen, and the whole company, after a rapid
conversation, agreed that they would try No. 277 on the
other side of the Avenue. And here their fortunes
changed.
For here it proved that the "cops" on that beat,
finding nights growing somewhat cold, and that there was
no provision made by the police commissioners for a club-
room for gentlemen of their profession, had themselves
arranged in the polling-booth a convenient place for
the reading of the evening newspapers and for conference
on their mutual affairs. These "cops" were unmarried
men, and did not much know where was the home in which
the governor requested them to spend their Thanksgiving.
They had therefore determined to spread their own table
in their club-room, and this evening had been making
preparations for a picnic feast there at midnight on
Thanksgiving Day, when they should be relieved from their
more pressing duties. They also had found the liberality
of each member of the force had brought in more than
would be requisite, and were considering the same subject
which had oppressed the consciences of the leaders of the
other bands.
No one ever knew who made the great suggestion, but
it is probable that it was one of these officials, well
acquainted with the charter of the city of Boston and
with its constitution and by-laws, who offered the
proposal which was adopted. In the jealousy of the
fierce democracy of Boston in the year 1820, when the
present city charter was made, it reserved for itself
permission to open Faneuil Hall at any time for a public
meeting. It proves now that whenever fifty citizens
unite to ask for the use of the hall for such a meeting,
it must be given to them. At the time of which we are
reading the mayor had to preside at every such meeting.
At the "Cops'" club it was highly determined that the
names of fifty citizens should at once be obtained,
and that the Cradle of Liberty should be secured for the
general Thanksgiving.
It was wisely resolved that no public notice should
be given of this in the journals. It was well known that
that many-eyed Argus called the press is very apt not to
interfere with that which is none of its business.
VII
And thus it happened that, when Thanksgiving Day came,
the worthy janitor of Faneuil Hall sent down his
assistant to open it, and that the assistant, who meant
to dine at home, found a good-natured friend from the
country who took the keys and lighted the gas in his
place. Before the sun had set, Frederick Dane and
Antonio Fero and Michael Chevalier and the Honorable
Mr. Walk-in-the-Water and Eben Kartschoff arrived with
an express-wagon driven by a stepson of P. Nolan.
There is no difficulty at Faneuil Hall in bringing out
a few trestles and as many boards as one wants for
tables, for Faneuil Hall is a place given to
hospitality. And so, before six o'clock, the hour
assigned for the extemporized dinner, the tables were
set with turkeys, with geese, with venison, with mallards
and plover, with quail and partridges, with cranberry and
squash, and with dishes of Russia and Italy and Greece
and Bohemia, such as have no names. The Greeks brought
fruits, the Indians brought venison, the Italians
brought red wine, the French brought walnuts and
chestnuts, and the good God sent a blessing. Almost
every man found up either a wife or a sweetheart or a
daughter or a niece to come with him, and the feast went
on to the small hours of Friday. The Mayor came down on
time, and being an accomplished man, addressed them in
English, in Latin, in Greek, in Hebrew, and in Tuscan.
And it is to be hoped that they understood him.
But no record has ever been made of the feast in any
account-book on this side the line. Yet there are those
who have seen it, or something like it, with the eye of
faith. And when, a hundred years hence, some antiquary
reads this story in a number of the "Omaha
Intelligencer," which has escaped the detrition of the
thirty-six thousand days and nights, he will say,--
"Why, this was the beginning of what we do now! Only
these people seem to have taken care of strangers only
one month in the twelve. Why did they not welcome all
strangers in like manner, until they had made them feel
at home? These people, once a year, seem to have fed the
hungry. Would it not have been simpler for them to
provide that no man should ever be hungry? These people
certainly thanked God to some purpose once a year; how
happy is the nation which has learned to thank Him always!"
-THE END-
Edward Everett Hale's short story: Thanksgiving At The Polls
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