A Sunday Sail on the Bay - July 1883

On Monday, July 30, 1883, a newspaper article, written under the pseudonym of The Idle Spectator, appeared in which the narrator described at length his Sunday sailing experiences on Hamilton Bay:

“A fine breeze blew across the bay. Over in the east, the sun was coming up. The beams fell on the water making it like a vast sheet of shimmering gold. Very few people were around Bastien’s boathouse when we went down. There were not enough of us to make it worthwhile getting a yacht, so we contented ourselves with Bastien’s lugger which, by the way, is a very good one. We hoisted the sail and in a minute were off.”¹

¹ “The Idle Spectator : Goes for a Sunday Sail and Tells All About It.”

Hamilton Spectator.   July 30, 1883.

The sailors headed west from Bastien’s boathouse in the direction of Carroll’s Point and the former house and property of the Carroll family:

“Rock Bay looms up right ahead of us. Suddenly, Jack shouts, ‘Stand by your halyards,’ and then, ‘hower away.’ In a few minutes everything is made taut. Jack and one of the other fellows strip and go in for a swim, while Harry and I jump to the shore and wander along the bank. We walk around Carroll’s Point and sit down to rest under the shade of a big tree. Then we light our pipes and lie at our ease.

“There is an old Indian legend connected with this place. Ages and ages ago, when all Hamilton was a howling wilderness, a fair young squaw and a handsome young brave dwelt near this spot and loved each other with all the ardor and passion that has ever characterized the dusky race. They quarreled, just as lovers quarrel now-a-days, and to make him jealous, she flirted, is such a thing as flirtation was in vogue at that time. In a mad moment, when he was in despair, he sought the top of the bank and making an awful leap, plunged headfirst into the bay. The water was not very deep then, and his head stuck in the mud, while his feet waved romantically above the water’s edge. Before assistance could come, he suffocated. The fair young squaw went crazy over his death, and the story runs that she plunged in the same way and was drowned in the self-same spot.

“But it is said that on the third of every August, the ghastly tragedy is gone through again. Spirit forms dark in color leap into the bay; spirit forms pick the bodies up, and if you stay very quiet and listen attentively, you can hear a low, sad, wailing strain coming from the forest above. It is the funeral of the two lovers and the sweet soft cadenza you hear is the song of Indian spirits chanting the lovers’ requiem.”¹

After the stopover at Carroll’s Point, the sailing party headed across the bay to the Beach Strip and Dynes’ hotel:

“Here is Dynes’ at last. A sad-eyed man with a carbuncle on his nose stands on the wharf. He glares at me and makes me feel uncomfortable. In the garden a couple of girls wearing gigantic hoops which tilt their dresses up and down as they walk, revealing low slippers and striped hose, are strolling up and down, trying to pick up a flirtation with someone.”¹

After securely tying up Bastien’s lugger, the sailing party headed towards Dynes’ hotel:

“The stoop of the house is crowded. All classes of the community are represented there. The city tough, collarless, tieless with red face and hat pulled down over his eyes; the young bank clerk who puts on a jersey and stocking cap and calls himself a yachtsman; the sturdy mechanic who has come down here for day’s rest after his week’s hard work; the sporting man with his plug hat and flashy, horsey attire; the young clerk who has driven his girl down for a day’s fun in an economical way. A way up the road, three or four young fellows are playing ball. Over on the grass by the fence, a sturdy philosopher sits contently smoking a pipe and watching the scene. Presently, the dinner bell rings, and we rush in to dine.”¹

When the young men from the city entered Dynes’ hotel, they ran into the establishment’s proprietor, Old John Dynes’ himself:

“Old John is famous for his dinners. There he sits on the stoop at the back of the house. He is a middle-sized, gray-headed man with a round, red, good-natured face. He is always smiling. His heart, like his body, is immense. There is a kindly look on his face that tells you this. It has always been like this with him and it makes him popular. He has had his reverses in life and his friends have stood by him, and helped him through. His new place place is not nearly so homelike and comfortable as his little old pine house that seemed, like its owner, to welcome everyone with a smiling front. But old John is there just the same as of old, happy and bearing fortune’s buffets and rewards with equal thanks.”¹

After the meal at Dynes’, the young men sailed down the canal and to the piers extending out into Lake Ontario:

“Just after we got there, the train came down with a crowd. Very few ladies were there; clerks and artisans most of them, though a few of the gentler sex graced the scene. We strolled up and down the piers in front of the Ocean house and along the shore.

“Time went around lively and it was 8 o’clock before we started to return. Already the shadows were falling. Across the bay, we could see lights here and there shining like stars. The wind carried us quickly onward. Presently Jack started singing Abide With Me. We all joined in and our voices rolled out the beautiful hymn in perfect unison.

“Half past ten o’clock at last, and we have just reached Bastien’s wharf. Silently we tie the lugger to the moorings and pull in. We walk slowly up and we feel that though a dogmatic person would say we had fractured the Sabbath, it is only when we revel in all the glory of God’s handiwork that we realize to the full His goodness. His greatness, His grandeur and revere and love him as we ought.”¹

Spear Fishing on the Bay - February 1884

1884-02-18 Spectator

      “The Idle Spectator : Goes on a Spearing Expedition Across the Bay”

       “We had been talking about doing it for some weeks beforehand, and the other afternoon we got everything in readiness, put plenty of smoking material in our pockets, stowed carefully away three little pocket flasks filled with a cold-destroying beverage, buttoned our overcoats up to our chins, got cigars going, and in the chill afternoon, started on a brisk walk for the bay.

          “Before we go any further, let me introduce the party to you, gentle reader. This one, at the lead here, with the innocent air, and a smile that is childlike and bland, is John Smith’s son, aged 42, the other one is the only son of a man named Jones. They are familiar figures, you have seen them both before, and, as for me, is there a man, woman or child in this whole bloomin’ hamlet who is not familiar with your humble servant, the Idle Spectator?

          “Ever go fishing in the wintertime? No? Lots of fun, I tell you. Easy to get there, and if you will follow my steps, you will find out how it is done.

          “We walk down James street, turning west on Stuart, and going straight along until we reach Bay. Then across the railway bridge, turn to your left on the other side, go down a little incline, then a few yards west on the road, and turning to the right, walk carefully along a board walk until we reach Matt Thompson’s boat house.

          “It is a peculiar place inside this boathouse, though common enough looking, as we approach, and it revels in a heterogeneous collection of half-finished boats, broken and unbroken oars, scraps and bolts of iron, skates, fishing nets, poles, tackle, shavings and odds and ends of all sorts.

          “Genial Mat stands at a carpenter’s bench, running along the west side of the house, drawing consolation and smoke from a black and juicy clay pipe, that would make any ordinary man sick for a week.

“Mat is a great favorite among the boys. Kind, jolly, generous, always ready to do a good turn to anybody, he finds everybody ready and willing to do a good turn to him. He is quite a character and a great prophet, albeit in almost every circumstance, his prophesies are not of a particularly cheerful nature, being generally foretelling of death. A number of cases have come under my notice where Mat has told people in the best of health that they would not live more than a week or two longer, and every time he has called the turn with an accuracy that is little less than miraculous.

“A couple of years ago, I sat one summer afternoon on the little ‘wharf’ in front of Mat’s place, while that gentleman stood in the doorway and pulled lazily at his pipe. A lad of some twelve or thirteen years was playing around. Mat was watching him intently and curiously. Presently he said : ‘Me boy, as sure as ye’re a livin’ boy, before this afternoon is over, ye’ll be drowned!” The boy went away, and in less than an hour afterwards, his lifeless body was pulled from the water, into which he had fallen while playing around a neighboring boathouse.

“I am always afraid to go near Mat because I fear he may sometime call the turn on me, and I don’t want to start on a voyage of exploration to the undiscovered country just yet. But, so far, he has kindly refrained from prophesying my demise, and I am living along from day to day in hopes that I am safe for the next decade.

“But while I have been telling you about that, we have asked him for the key of his hut, a favor which he grants as he grants every favor – with a pleasing alacrity and a ready smile, and as we are inexperienced in the art, if art it can be called, of spearing fish, he is telling us how to go about it, while he occupies himself in fixing up a spear for our exclusive use and benefit. After filling our pockets with shavings, we grapple the spear firmly, one fellow carrying it while the rest of us wrestle with the cable at the end of it, and start for the hut, which lies far across the bay by Carroll’s Point.

“In silence, we walk on, John Smith’s son, breaking out into an occasional whistle, which Jones Jr. promptly suppresses with a lump of snow.

“The bay is sheeted with a light covering of snow between which and the solid ice, there is a crust of ice and about half an inch of water, which does not make walking particularly pleasant. But we took the precaution to put on stout rubbers before we started walking, and though pedestrianism was a little difficult, our feet remained dry, which is one eternal blessing.

“After fifteen minutes’ walking we reached the little colony of fishing huts that is built up around Carrol’s Point and the Desjardins canal, a few scattered ones extending halfway down to Rock Bay.

“John Smith’s son, who had been there before, and who we had installed as guide, as he professed to now the way and the hut, now leads us up to the door of an antiquated-looking concern near the canal. When he gets there he finds it’s not the right place and we have to wander helplessly around from door to door seeking the hut.

“Finally, after ten minutes’ fruitless search for a door that the key we carry will unlock, a good Samaritan in the shape of a small boy on skates looms before us. To him we explain our quandary, and after some hesitation he directs us to a hut about a quarter of a mile away, with a bench standing in front of it.

“We go wearily over and find that the key won’t fit there. Then we look at each other blankly and swear, not violently or in an angry manner, but calmly, dispassionately and deliberately. Swearing relieves our feelings, but it don’t find the hut, and after some more searching, we run against a man who directs us to the right place at last.

“If you never saw the inside of one of these huts, take the advice of an Idle Spectator and see one before you die. It is a most peculiar affair, both inside and outside. The base is not more than five feet square, if it’s that, and it gets gradually narrower as it goes up.

“On one side, a small sheet-iron stove is nailed to the wall. The stove look miraculously like a piece of stove pipe and the pipe from it is about the size of a good, healthy apple.

“But, the little stove is capable of throwing an immense amount of heat, and it can make things most unpleasantly warm. A bench runs along another side and, right at our feet yawns a round gaping hole in the ice, some two or three feet in diameter. This is the hole that you get your fish out of – sometimes.

The door is shut, the fire started, we light cigars and proceed to lay for our finny friends. How do we do it? Simple enough. We use for bait a small iron fish painted brightly. This dangles in the water by the aid of a small cord and a short stick with a man at the end of it, and while this fellow plays with the fish, another one sits with the spear clasped in his hand, in an upright position, ready to descend and imprison any luckless fish that happens to stray beneath it, attracted by the bright color and erratic movements of its iron image.

“The spear is a very common-looking affair, and is merely an iron head with a number of barbed prongs on it, set on a long wooden handle.

“The other man attends to the fire and performs miscellaneous and multifarious duties. The phosphorescent light from the ice makes everything easily visible, the water beneath us clear as crystal and we can see the bottom of the bay very plainly.

“We are told by John Smith’s son, at this juncture, that we must not make a noise or we will scare away all the fish within a radius of a hundred yards, after which he sings softly, with a clearness and accuracy, which shows that time has left unimpaired his marvellous ear for music, and one of te trios from the Queen’s Lace Handkerchief:

                   ‘Silence, silence, not above a whisper

                    To betray one’s confidence is singularly weak,

                             In a serious matter

                             Only magpies chatter.’

 And it’s only little pigs go squeak, squeak, squeak.’

          “So we sit and smoke and chat in an underdone. Our cigars go out and we light fresh ones. Time flies, but we stay.

          “The icon fish dangled at the end of Jones Jr.s stick, skips and goes languidly to the bottom where it lies patiently for a moment, then upward comes again. But no fish

          “Time goes along once more. By and by it begins to dawn on us that we came there to fish, not to sit and gaze idiotically at a hole in the ice. We have been doing this gaze act for over an hour and it has brought forth no results, save an unlimited supply of profanity.

          “Finally, we get up and go outside, lock the door and stand for a minute, gazing at Hamilton, far away in the distance. Large soft flakes of moist snow are falling gently down. They rest for a moment lovingly against the vast cloud of smoke, from the dozens of busy factories, that hovers perpetually over the city, and then sink to the earth and then are lost to sight.

          “We go as we came, without a fish. In silence, we take a simultaneous nip to keep out the cold, and then start languidly on our homeward way.

 

        

Saturday Night Downtown Walk - 1883

"Saturday and Sunday: The City by Night As Seen by an Idle Spectator: A Tramp Around the Town – Human Nature on a Street Crossing – Patent Medicine and Peanuts"

Spectator October 29, 1883

Where do they all come from, and where do they all go to? From how many hundreds of homes comes the madding crowd? The old man with his battered hat that once was a handsome plug, and with a black and greasy clay pipe, with a broken stem stuck independently in his mouth; his wife with her bonnet of twenty years ago, a gaudy plaid shawl, a market basket, and a black stuff dress that has seen hard service; the daughter with the latest thing in hats on her blonde hair, with her Mother Hubbard dress, spreading hoops and high heel boots; the son in a fly suit made of diagonal cloth, spring bottomed pants, pointed shoes and a slouchy felt hat, which, like his plentifully oiled hair, is down low on his forehead. This is one party. But there are hosts of others there. The swell, with his cane, glass, dainty moustache and infinitesimal cigarette; the brainless fop or “dude” with the latest agony in green coat and vest, and light striped pants on; the grimy workman with his day’s toil still lingering on his honest face; the small boy with a big cigar, looking ludicrously out of place, stuck between his lips, giving him a sort of a “ I am tuff, I am” expression; the sewing girls, in all their gorgeous Sunday’s finery, out on the mash; and the thousand and one other representatives of every class and sort of humanity, all marching, seeming aimlessly, up and down, up and down, and making up the  nondescript crowd that throngs Hamilton’s principal streets every Saturday and Sunday evenings from 7:30 until about 10 o’clock.

Saturday evening a Spectator reporter laid in a stock of good cigars, put on a Piccadilly collar, grasped a substantial cane firmly in his right hand and set out to “do the town.” It was seven o’clock when he reached King Street, and the crowd had already commenced to gather. The air was full of tobacco smoke, profanity and snatches of desultory conversation. Mostly young men and boys out now. The girls have not made ready yet, but here and there down the stone sidewalk a graceful female figure can be seen treading its way along, flitting in and out amongst groups of two and three, that spread themselves across the pave. The shop windows form an irresistible attraction to the Saturday night promenaders. At every window, groups stand, taking in the tastefully displayed wares, and making a running fire of comments on the merits of the various windows inspected on the route. Here at the corner of King and James streets, there is always a crowd. A surging, struggling mass of promiscuous humanity, the girls invariably edging over to the inside, so that they may have a fleeting glance at their features in the looking glass on the corner, to see if their bangs are set right, and if any hair pins are peeping out from the wealth of tresses that lay gracefully coiled into a snug knot on the fair, white neck behind. A little push and you are through this crowd, and down James street, where the same throng surges up and down, up and down in the same unceasing manner as the wash of waves on the seas shore. Over on the market square, a crowd has gathered around an itinerant pedlar of cheap jewellery, who is shouting his wares so loudly that he can be heard a block away. On his right a man with long hair is detailing the virtues of a certain cure-all patent medicine, which Divine Providence has made him the special means of best bestowing upon the world at large for the moderate sum of 25 cents a bottle. A few steps from them sits a patient, cheerful, honest-looking man, sole proprietor of a taffy store, fruit emporium and peanut stand on wheels. Bad weather may bring a frown to his usually placid face, but never a word of complaint comes from his lips, and he posses the exemplary and rare virtue of contentment. The flaming flambeaux of these three falls on the face of a lady in silk attire, the workingman’s wife and the shameless painted face, with the wan smile and lustreless eye of the woman of the street. The ruddy glare falls on the faces of men and women alike, on the beardless youth and the world-worn man whose curiosity have attracted them to hear the words of wisdom fall from the lips of the vendors of patent medicine, jewellery and fresh-roasted peanuts. On the crossing that leads to the other side of the street, the Idle Spectator encountered a man who has been vainly endeavouring for the past five minutes to get a match going for a sufficient length of time to light a cigar. The Idle one who has a fragrant weed in his mouth, at which he is lazily puffing, courteously proffers a light, which the unsuccessful igniter accepts with a grunt and returns presently without a word. “That’s human nature all over,” the lounger says to himself philosophically, “ give a man a thing he don’t ask for and in nine cases out of ten he won’t thank you for it, but when he asks you! Dear! You have enough thanks to last a lifetime,” and the idler strolls away until he is lost to sight in the shifting mob on the sidewalk. Sunday night is merely a repetition of the other, only there is not so much light, not so much noise, more fine dresses and very few papas and mammas to break up the harmony of Mary Jane’s little sauntering with the overgrown small boy who drives the delivery cart for the grocer on the corner below. There is more “mashing” done on Sunday night than on the other nights of the week put together, and that mysterious process is going on all along the line of march. Sunday clothes everywhere. Girls in purple and fine linen with dowdy jewellery and affected airs and graces, keep sharp look outs for presentable “fellows,” who they are ashamed to take to the gate of their poverty-stricken home, where their tawdry finery hangs in a bare, comfortless room, in bitter contrast to what is around, while the mother sits below almost in rags. The darkness which has settled over the city, and which the glimmer of the corner lamps only serve to make more intense, hides a multitude of sins, and follies and faults: it covers up many a shortcoming and hides many a bad breach in one’s moral character; like a great cloak, it descends over all, and the poor puppets in the farce of life walk to and fro under its sheltering gloom, forgetting the lives of honesty, and virtue and manliness, that every true man and woman should lead.

Ghost - February 20 1883

A Spectator reporter started to compose some very interesting slices of life in 1883 Hamilton which eventually became stories from The Idle Spectator – this could be one of them before the pseudonym was chosen :

“On Monday morning, at a very early hour, as a Spectator compositor was going home up King street, wondering why it is that people who write long letters for publication are invariably the worst penmen in the country, he was startled at an appearance on the sidewalk before him. A figure in white approached rapidly, and with noiseless steps. The compositor’s hair didn’t rise, because he parted company with it shortly after his marriage, and his head is not now much more shaggy than a billiard ball. But he felt perturbed within. He was possessed of a desire to fly, but his feet were apparently rooted to the ground and he couldn’t budge. The ghost came nearer, and the compositor’s feet grew heavier and heavier, and although the mercury was toying with zero, he perspired freely. Presently the ghost’s noiseless progress brought him near enough for the compositor to make him out. The spook turned out to be a lad of 14, sand boots, sans socks, sans culottes, sans hat, sans everything except shirt and drawers. His eyes were wide open and fixed, , and the compositor who had seen Emma Abbot in La Sonnambula, at once tumbled to the fact that he had struck a somnambulist. The weights fell from his feet, and he collared the ex-spook and shook the somnambulism out of him. The weather was very cold, and when the sleepwalker regained his senses, he realized the fact that he was rather lightly dressed for a moonlight ramble in midwinter, and his teeth rattled like castanets. The compositor took him home, where he found that the somnambulist had walked out of the house without disturbing the family, and had half-sprung the front door behind him. The somnambulist’s name is Pearce, and he resides at 96 George street.”

Thanksgiving - 1883

Mary’s Thanksgiving: A Plain, Unvarnished Love Tale for Today: Written Especially for Canada’s Great Daily by that Gifted But Unappreciated Genius, The Idle Spectator.

Spectator  November 8, 1883

Thanksgiving day came late this year, and winter had already set in. It was bitterly cold. The wind whistled shrilly around the corners, and pedestrians hurried adown the streets with their hands thrust deeply in their overcoat pockets. They shivered as they walked. The wind seemed to pierce through their warm winter clothing, and chill them. The hard snow crunched beneath their feet as they went along. Blue faces and red noses were everywhere. In a dull sky the pale, yellow wintry sun was shining but with only strength enough to make the snow on the housetops settle down solidly.

        In a frame house on John street north, just near by the bridge that stretches over the Grand Trunk railway track, Mary Jantzen was sitting. Tall and straight was Mary, with clear cut, regular features, and a wreath of yellow golden hair coiled in a simple knot behind. Her eyes were of a deep unfathomable blue, and no person could say that she was not a beautiful girl, but just now her face was sad and sorrowful, and the gaunt caresses of care and want had marked her cheek.

For her lot was a hard one and her story unhappy. Ten years ago they had come to Hamilton to live, she and her father and her mother and Nellie, aged 3, and little George, whose advent into this world of joys and sorrows had only been but a few short weeks before. Mary herself was thirteen years old then. She had no money or property. Old George Jantzen was an honest, hard-working shoemaker, who depended on his day’s pay for their daily food. Neither himself, nor his wife were at all provident, and while they might have saved money and put by something for a rainy day, had they practised proper economy, they unfortunately, continued spending all that was made, and left themselves without any provision for the future. Three years after reaching this city, the father was taken sick with pneumonia, and after a few days confinement to his bed, died. His fellow workmen in the large manufactory, in which he was employed, clubbed together and paid his funeral expenses and made a small purse for his wife. They were poor themselves and couldn’t do much, but their hearts went out with the financial comfort they gave. For three years longer, Mary and her mother lived and supported the two children. Then Mrs. Jantzen followed her husband to the unknown country, and Mary was left all alone with the little ones. By this time, she had grown to be a beautiful girl, and as a consequence had lots of lovers. Her nature was one calculated to attract a man. Sweet and pure and honest, with a firm belief in human goodness and integrity, upright and true herself, and believing everyone else the same, she was an oasis in this desert we call the world, where boys in their teens are confirmed skeptics, cynics and philosophers. A diligent student, she had managed to read a great deal, and her reading had been of the better class, so that when her mother died, she possessed an education above the average girl in her position.

Below her, on the same street, lived John Derroon. Honest and brown and ragged was he, and there was a world of love for Mary in his heart. To him she was the girl of girls, the one and only one, though he was several years older than she was. A year before her mother’s death he had gone to her and told her of his great love. In the far west he thought he could make a competence, if not a fortune, quickly, and if she would only wait for him awhile, he would return to her and marry her, and Mary, who had long ago given up her trusting little heart to him, leaned her head upon his breast, looked shyly up with the love peeping out from her great blue eyes, and their troth was plighted. And Jack went away. Five years had passed since then, and Jack had not returned. No word had come to her now for a long, long while. A dozen letters had reached her during the first few months, and after that she heard no more. But her heart was true to him now, as it ever had been, and not one doubt of him ever crossed her mind. What kept him away and silent, she did not know, nor could she even conjecture, but she felt sure it was all right.

She had had a hard struggle of it since her mother’s death. There was the rent to pay, fuel to provide and the two children, both of whom were too young to be of any assistance, to provide for. But she had struggled on. Heaven only knows how. Slow starvation her existence had been, but she battled manfully with poverty, and kept the children from want. But of late, work such work as she had been in the habit of doing, had been slack. Little by little, the small stock of furniture had grown gradually less, and this morning, with the last thing in the house that could by hook or by crook be parted with, gone to the second-hand store and pawn shop, she sat in the poor little house while the children slept. The larder was empty – there was not even a crust of bread in the house. A rusty stove stood in the bare and cheerless room, but there was not so much as a piece of pine board around with which she could make a blaze and take the chilly edge off the dense cold that seemed to fill the room. And this was Thanksgiving Day ! Outside the church bells were ringing their glad, joyous peals, sounding loud and plain through the clear and frosty atmosphere. Happy men and women she could see through the windows, hurrying past to church to thank God for all His mercies and goodness, and to chant in His praise. And this was Thanksgiving Day ! The thought came to her, and the words seemed filled with a terribly cruel mockery. “Thanksgiving day,” she said to herself bitterly, “but not to me – not to me ! For what should I return thanks to the almighty ? For what my God ? For what ?”

She burst into tears, and it did her good. Her feelings were over-wrought and strained, and the relief to the mental tension composed her again. “I must be calm and brave,” she said, “ for the children’s sake.” By and by they awoke, dressed themselves, and came out. They were pale and weak-looking. They wanted food, but there was none for them, they knew or they would have got it at once. They had wanted a great many times lately when it had not been forthcoming and they had got now so that they did not ask for it. They bore the privation patiently, but they looked at Mary wistfully. She caught the glance and interpreted it correctly. And then she commenced crying again. Not passionately this time, but with long convulsive sobs that shook her frame. “They want food,” she cried, “ and I have none to give them. My God ! My God !” The tears drew forth the children’s  sympathy for their sister. Nellie went up putting her arms around her neck. “Never mind, dear,” she said, “ George and I can bear it. “ George manfully acquiesced. He was ten years old now, and quite a brave and handsome little fellow. But he was cold and starving, and moved by his sister’s sob, the tears presently commenced stealing silently down his cheek. They followed faster and faster, and at last he commenced to cry as if his little heart would break. Nellie, sad and wan, so like her older sister, was the only one of the three whose eyes were dry. She still kept her arms about her sister’s neck and tried to comfort her with loving words. By and by, Mary’s sobs ceased, and she dried her red and swollen eyes. Then she sat, and waited, and talked with the other two. The day wore away, and the night began to fall. The keen pangs of hunger were momentarily growing worse, and harder to bear. Towards seven o’clock Mary rose and put on her bonnet and the old shawl that had once been her mother’s. “I’m going out, dears,” she said simply, “to try and get something to eat. Wait until I return.” She kissed them both and went out. A kind-hearted woman whom she knew lived up the street. She would go to her, she thought, and try to get relief, and tomorrow, Ah tomorrow! She shuddered as she thought of it. Unless something happened, tomorrow meant more starvation, and perhaps death. And this was Thanksgiving day The tears streamed down her face again. “My God!” And she walked on.

In the meantime the children sat in the comfortless room and waited for her return. Presently a knock came to the door and Nellie answered. A tall, bearded stranger stood there. He took in the appearance of the room and its occupants at a glance, and trembled slightly.

“ Does Miss Jantzen live here?” he asked.

“ Miss Jantzen does,” Nellie replied. “My mother is dead>

“Dead?” And your sister – where is she?”

“She is out just now after – after –“

“After what?

“Something to eat, sir.”

The stranger looked at her and smiled.

“Are you hungry, little one,” he asked.

“Oh, very. We have had nothing to eat all day.

“Nothing to eat all day,” he repeated, and his glance again wandered over the room. “Nothing to eat all day! Poor child, poor child.” Then he seemed to hesitate. “I will be back in a moment,” he said again presently.

He walked to the corner grocery store, and in a few minutes returned, bearing a couple of loaves of bread and several small parcels. These he left with the children and walked rapidly away again. George and his sister got to work with a ravenous appetite upon the food thus unexpectedly procured. In a few minutes Mary returned, bearing a small basket of provisions. The children hurried to tell her of what had happened in her absence. She was puzzled. She could not understand it But suddenly a thought struck her. What if it should be Jack? At this idea all sorts of wild hopes flew into her head. She was devoured with a feverish anxiety. In an instant her hunger had left her, and she could think of nothing but the mysterious deliverer. Another knock at the door, which, when opened, revealed a man with a sleigh outside.

“Miss Jantzen live here?”

“Yes.”

“ These things are for her then.” He took out a couple of large baskets filled to overflowing, and set them down. The children lugged them in. They were full of good things. Another knock, and a boy with a sleigh full of wood appeared. Mary was wild with hope and anxiety. But she bustled about, and lit a good fire in the stove. An hour or more passed. A footstep came rapidly down the street, and stopped in front of the door. She flew across and opened it, though she was so nervous and trembling that she could hardly unhook the latch. The stranger stood outside.

“Mary,” he said simply.

Oh! Jack,” she cried. “Is it you at last?”

And he answered her: “My darling, it is.”

What happened after that concerns neither you nor me, gentle reader. Mary had something to be thankful for after all, and the moral of this little tale isn’t hard to find. It is this: That God in His greatness, His goodness, and His mercy has given each and every one of you something to be thankful for today. Ask Jack and his wife, and they will tell you that too. They have been married now for many years, and Thanksgiving day to them is the most sacred day that ever comes.