Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

01Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen There is one day that is ours.

02There is one day when all Americans go back to the old home and eat a big dinner.

03Bless the day.

04The President gives it to us every year.

05Sometimes he talks about the people who had the first Thanksgiving.

06They were the Puritans.

07They were some people who landed on our Atlantic shore.

08We really don't remember much about them.

09But those people ate a large bird called Turkey on the first Thanksgiving Day.

10So we have turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, if we have enough money to buy a turkey.

11That is a tradition.

12Yes, Thanksgiving Day is the one day of the year that is purely American.

13And now here is the story to prove to you that we have old traditions in this new country.

14They are growing older more quickly than traditions in old countries.

15That is because we are so young and full of life.

16We do everything quickly.

17Stuffy Pete sat down on a seat in the New York City park named Union Square.

18It was the third seat to the right as you enter Union Square from the east.

19Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had sat down there at one in the afternoon.

20Every time things had happened to him.

21They were wonderful things.

22They made his heart feel full of joy.

23And they filled another part of him too.

24They filled the part below his heart.

25On those other Thanksgiving days he had been hungry.

26It is a strange thing.

27There are rich people who wish to help the poor.

28But many of them seem to think that the poor are hungry only on Thanksgiving Day.

29But today Pete was not hungry.

30He had come from a dinner so big that he had almost no power to move.

31His light green eyes looked out from a gray face on which there was still a little food.

32His breath was short.

33His body had suddenly become too big for his clothes.

34It seemed ready to break out of them.

35They were torn.

36You could see his skin through a hole in the front of his shirt.

37But the cold wind with snow in it felt pleasantly cool to him.

38For Stuffy Pete was overheated with the warmth of all he had had to eat.

39The dinner had been much too big.

40It seemed to him that his dinner had included all the turkey and all the other food in the whole world.

41So he sat very, very full.

42He looked out at the world without interest.

43As if it could never offer him anything more.

44The dinner had not been expected.

45He had been passing a large house near the beginning of that great broad street called Fifth Avenue.

46It was the home of two ladies of an old family.

47These two old ladies had a deep love of traditions.

48There were certain things they always did.

49On Thanksgiving Day at noon, they always sent a servant to stand at the door.

50There he waited for the first hungry person to walk by.

51The servant had orders to bring that person into the house and feed him until he could eat no more.

52Stuffy Pete happened to pass by on his way to the park.

53The servant had gathered him in.

54Tradition had been followed.

55Stuffy Pete sat in the park looking straight before him for ten minutes.

56Then he felt a desire to look in another direction.

57With a very great effort, he moved his head slowly to the left.

58Then his eyes grew wider and his breath stopped.

59His feet in their torn shoes at the ends of his short legs moved about on the ground.

60For the old gentleman was coming across Fourth Avenue toward Stuffy's seat.

61Every Thanksgiving for nine years, the old gentleman had come there to find Stuffy Pete on his seat.

62That was a thing that the old gentleman was trying to make into a tradition.

63Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years, he had found Stuffy there.

64Then he had led Stuffy to a restaurant and watched him eat a big dinner.

65They do these things more easily in old countries like England.

66They do them without thinking about them.

67But in this young country, we must think about them.

68In order to build a tradition, we must do the same thing again and again for a long time.

69The old gentleman loved his country.

70He believed he was helping to build a great American tradition.

71And he had been doing very well.

72Nine years is a long time here.

73The old gentleman moved straight and proud toward the tradition that he was building.

74Truly, feeding Stuffy Pete once a year was not a very important tradition.

75There are greater and more important traditions in England.

76But it was a beginning.

77It proved that a tradition was at least possible in America.

78The old gentleman was thin and tall and sixty.

79He was dressed all in black.

80He wore eyeglasses.

81His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last year.

82His legs did not seem as strong as they had seemed the year before.

83As this kind old gentleman came toward him, Stuffy began to shake and his breath was shorter.

84He wished he could fly away.

85But he could not move from his seat.

86Good morning, said the old gentleman.

87I am glad to see that the troubles of another year have not hurt you.

88You continue to move in health about the beautiful world.

89For that blessing, you and I can give thanks on this day of Thanksgiving.

90If you will come with me, my man, I will give you a dinner that will surely make your body feel as thankful as your mind.

91That is what the old gentleman said every time.

92Every Thanksgiving day for nine years.

93The words themselves were almost a tradition.

94Always before they had been music in Stuffy's ear.

95But now he looked up at the old gentleman's face with tears of suffering in his eyes.

96The snow turned quickly to water when it fell upon his hot face.

97But the old gentleman was shaking with the cold.

98He turned away with his back to the wind.

99And he did not see Stuffy's eyes.

100Stuffy had always wondered why the old gentleman seemed sad as he spoke.

101He did not know that it was because the old gentleman was wishing that he had a son.

102A son would come there after he himself was gone.

103A son would stand proud and strong before Stuffy and say, In remembrance of my father.

104Then it would really be a tradition.

105But the old gentleman had no family.

106He lived in a room in one of the old houses near the park.

107In the winter he grew a few flowers there.

108In the spring he walked on Fifth Avenue.

109In the summer he lived in a farmhouse in the hills outside New York.

110And he talked of a strange bug he hoped someday to find.

111In the fall season he gave Stuffy a dinner.

112These were the things that filled the old gentleman's life.

113Stuffy Pete looked up at him for half a minute.

114Helpless.

115And very sorry for himself.

116The old gentleman's eyes were bright with the giving pleasure.

117His face was getting older every year.

118But his clothes were very clean and fresh.

119And then Stuffy made a strange noise.

120He was trying to speak.

121As the old gentleman had heard the noise nine times before.

122He understood it.

123He knew that Stuffy was accepting.

124Thank you.

125I'm very hungry.

126Stuffy was very full.

127But he understood that he was part of a tradition.

128His desire for food on Thanksgiving Day was not his own.

129It belonged to this kind old gentleman.

130True, America is free.

131But there are some things that must be done.

132The old gentleman led Stuffy to the restaurant.

133And to the same table where they had always gone.

134They were known there.

135Here comes that old man, said a waiter.

136It buys the old no-good fella a dinner every Thanksgiving.

137The old gentleman sat at the table watching.

138The waiters brought food and more food.

139And Stuffy began to eat.

140No great and famous soldier ever battled more strongly against an enemy.

141The turkey and all the other food were gone almost as quickly as they appeared.

142Stuffy saw the look of happiness on the old gentleman's face.

143He continued to eat in order to keep it there.

144In an hour, the battle was finished.

145Thank you, Stuffy said.

146Thank you for my Thanksgiving dinner.

147Then he stood up heavily and started to go to the wrong door.

148A waiter turned him in the right direction.

149The old gentleman carefully counted out one dollar and thirty cents and left fifteen cents more for the waiter.

150They said goodbye as they did each year at the door.

151The old gentleman went south and Stuffy went north.

152Stuffy went around the first corner and stood for one minute.

153Then he fell.

154There he was found.

155He was picked up and taken to a hospital.

156They put him on a bed and began to try to discover what strange sickness had made him fall.

157And an hour later, the old gentleman was brought to the same hospital.

158And they put him on another bed and began to try to discover what his sickness could be.

159After a little time, one of the doctors met another doctor.

160And they talked.

161That nice old gentleman over there, he said, do you know what's wrong with him?

162He's almost dead for the need of food.

163A very proud old man, I think.

164He told me he has had nothing to eat for three days.