''
Thus a royal feast it was the Pilgrims spread
that first golden autumn at Plymouth, a feast
worthy of their Indian guests.
All slumbering discontents they smothered with
common rejoicings. When the holiday was over,
they were surely better, braver men because they
had turned aside to rest awhile and be thankful
together. So the exiles of Leyden claimed the
harvests of New England.
This festival was the bursting into life of a new
conception of man's dependence on God's gifts in
Nature. It was the promise of autumnal
Thanksgivings to come.
THE MASTER OF THE HARVEST
BY MRS. ALFRED GATTY (ADAPTED)
The Master of the Harvest walked by the side of
his cornfields in the springtime. A frown was on
his face, for there had been no rain for several
weeks, and the earth was hard from the parching
of the east winds. The young wheat had not been
able to spring up.
So as he looked over the long ridges that
stretched in rows before him, he was vexed and
began to grumble and say:--
``The harvest will be backward, and all things
will go wrong.''
Then he frowned more and more, and uttered
complaints against Heaven because there was no
rain; against the earth because it was so dry;
against the corn because it had not sprung up.
And the Master's discontent was whispered all
over the field, and along the ridges where the
corn-seed lay.
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