--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Spencer, Josephine collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 10 number: 1 published: 1906-11 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Josephine Spencer, "By Way of Thanksgiving," *Improvement Era* 10, no. 1 (November 1906): 56–61.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera101unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera101unse start_page: 56 end_page: 61 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1906-11) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera101unse publication_year: 1906 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1906, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # By Way of Thanksgiving BY WAY OF THANKSGIVING. BY JOSEPHINE SPENCER. "That's why she's called Thankful," said Melissa. "We felt that special Thanksgiving day would have been turned maybe into mourning but for her, — and when, finally, we came to christen her, it had to be something that would stand for our gratitude. It seemed like the naming of her had been put off for a special pur- — pose for time and again we'd set the day, and something came to interfere. She was five months old when she got her name— and she got it for being a heroine. Jim and the Mayvilles gave me all the credit, but I tell 'em I'd never had the wit myself to think of what that lump of blessedness put into my head. Haven't you heard how it all happened? The story went into the newspapers, and I supposed everyone knew. "You see, I'd known Mercy Mayville before she was married. — Her folks were the wealthiest people in the place but it never made any of 'em proud, and Mercy was just the sweetest of 'em .all. Never a time you met her that she hadn't a fine smile and word for you; and when trouble came she was always ready to help the humblest. It was when she had me up at the mansion to stay, the time I was down with the fever, that I learned to know her best. We'd all had it, father, mother, and the two boys and — Mercy just took me right away to her own home and nursed me through it all. "When I married Jim, there was a handsome present for us; and even after Mercy married, and went; away to the capital to live, she never forgot us. I was gUd when she made the old home her summer stopping place, for it gave me a chance to see her often while she was here, spite of the company that always BY WAY OF THANKSGIVING. 57 filled the house. In the winter she was always away— that is, after her parents died and the house was shut up: so it was quite an event to us when she came down here for Thanksgiving. You see, she'd taken it into her mind to givea house party here and have an old-fashioned dinner— then finish with a sleigh-ride over the country roads in the moonlight— a regular old-fashioned time all round. "She wrote to me about it a fortnight before— asking me to coax Martha Wall and her girls to take charge of the dinner. Martha was famous for her cooking— the very thought of her pumpkin pies, and doughnuts and apple-turnovers and tarts made your mouth drule like a baby's. As for Martha's girls— there's just one word to describe 'em — buxom. Plump and rosy, with complexions like buttermilk — the sight of 'em was> worth the price of a front seat at a theatre any time. "This was why Mercy wanted them specially — to help out with her pretty scheme, and as they all occasionally took- charge of parties like that, there was only the right way in asking. The only trouble with Martha was her temper, and it was this that came near making mincemeat of Mercy May ville's party. Neither her, nor me, nor Martha, either, I guess, knows just what happened at the house that day. 'Twas one of the mysteries of Mercy's life, Martha's flying up at the last minute there in the kitchen, and galloping off with her girls. "Think of a situation like that left on a hostess' hands! All morning the automobiles had been coming from the city, till the house was thronged with guests; and the first I knew, here come Mercy Mayville flying through the door — my door — with her cheeks red with the first real rage I'd ever seen her in, and her eyes red with — something else. She'd come to tell me about Martha an I the girls streaking off in a huff — and to know if I could tell her how to fill their place. Well, I did't know any one she could trust to do that —but me — and it didn't need the memory of all she'd done for me to make me voluntaer for the task. "I'd never been out at service —I'd had too kind and clever a fatner and husband for that— but I knew I coul 1 outcook even Martha Wall, and as for her girls— well, there was Jim, who always waited on table for me —and dressed up in his bUck suit 58 IMPROVEMENT ERA. looked a heap sweller than the butler the Mayvilles always brought down in the summer. "I had to take the baby along, having no one to leave her with —but she turned out to be a help in the way of entertaining, — to say nothing of what came after — for Mercy took her right out of the way into the parlor, and her cute ways and tricks kept the guests merry all afternoon. — "The dinner beat Martha Wall's best if the trumpeting is my — — own and as for Jim well to me, he looked and deported himself like a prince of the blood. How those city people did eat! Seven courses, and the plates clean from each one. When Jim brought 'em out to the kitchen, it was like a medal had been awarded each course. But the time they took made it awfully late for me and Jim and the baby. I couldn't undress her till they all went away for the sleighride, and that was nine o'clock. "We were to stay all night, for the party wouldn't be back till midnight, and there was the silver they had up from the bank vault to be tended till it could be properly packed away. When it was all washed up, we put it away in the panel closet under the stair; and I told Jim to go home and see to the cows and horses while I stayed with the house. "There wasn't a bit of fear in me, for I'd often stayed there alone in the summer time, while the folks in the house went junketing. "With the lights out and the doors all locked down stairs, I felt quite safe in my room on the second floor; and when the knob turned on me suddenly, as I sat undressing the baby, I never thought but that 'twas Jim come back. The sight of a mask always did give me a turn, and to see three of 'em peering at me all at once through that door, nearly ended my mortal life. I hadn't a sign of a 'no' ready when they asked me to tell 'em where I'd put the silver; a woman couldn't be stubborn long with three pistols facing her on a background of black masks. They locked me in when they went out, and 1 slipped the catch on the inside for myself and the babe, for there was no telling when they might come back, and a thief is a scoundrel all through. "How I got the little one into her night clothes, 1 don't know. What with the thought of that house, and the silver, and what BY WAY OF THANKSGIVING. 59 jewelry might be lying loose, all left in my care, and the fear that Jim might be back any minute, and fall into the hands of them cut- throats,my mind was brimmed to the bursting point. The Mayvilles' house robbed and Jim maybe murdered, and me sitting there helpless as a kitten! You've seen tigers walk back and forth in a cage with the look that senses and rages at the hopelessness of escape at the same time? I was like that; and I might have walked up and down there all night, if it hadn't been for her. "She'd been cooing through it all like a little dove; and when I put her on the floor to do my frantic promenade, she went creeping about as happy as you please, for the lark with the people all afternoon had put her in a gale of fun. It was her sudden change to a whimper that brought back my thoughts to her. She had crept to the door of the inner closet and kept lisping, 'Pone, pone;' and all of a sudden I realized she was asking for the megaphone weM amused her with in that very room, the last time the Mayvilles had been in the house. They'd used it on the roof to signal the guests home at meal time from places they'd drove or strolled to, and 'twas kept in the closet there that had an outer door opening handy to the stair leading to the roof. "My inspiration came like a flash, and in about the time of another one I had that big horn off the was through the shelf and double doors of the closet into the rear passage. I left the baby still whimpering below, and climbed the stairs in a jiff. With the thieves shut down there behind big oak doors and thick walls, I knew my voice would carry high over their ears; and I yelled through that instrument with every lung-cell I had pushed into my voice. " 'Jim!' I If you hear this, come to the edge of the called. grove where I can see you against the snow and wave your hat! Don't come near the house— it's full of thieves. Get the police and come as quick as you can. I'm locked in my room safe with the baby, but they've found the silver!' "Three times I yelled the message into the night air; then waited— while the baby whimpered louder and louder down door stairs— and I heard what seemed to be a loud rapping on the beyond. 60 IMPROVEMENT ERA. "At last, after what seemed to be an age I saw a black spot — on the snow near the edge of the grove. The moonlight was so bright I could easy see the hat waving, and knew Jim had heard. "I was back down stairs in time to hear the most peculiar kind of profanity ever put into human speech. The thieves hadn't been able to find out the trick into the panel closet, and had come to fetch me to do the act. I guess they'd been interviewing me on the subject all the time I was on the roof, for their words implied they had got impatient at my contempt. For all that, I was glad the baby's lungs had drowned out the sound of my wireless message on the roof. "They were threatening when f. came down, to break the door to splinters if I didn't come out; and I knew by the forcible form of their command that they meant it. I reckoned it would take Jim at kast twenty-five minutes to get to me with help — and how to keep the door shit for that long a time was my problem. I had strong arms, and it was as easy as frying doughnuts to move the chiffonier across the door, and back that with the dresser and bed, but they were three desperate men outside, all used to their work, as I sensed when I heard them picking away at the lock; and when in a minute I heard the knob fall to the floor, I knew it was just a question now, of muscle against hardwood furniture and my — heart went to my shoes. I was sitting with baby on the bed to help weight it, when, presently, I felt it move. For a minute I was paralyzed ; but the baby, bless her — was the one to put wit into my addled brain as she had before, "Tair!' she gooed, pointing again to the closet, and at the word I jumped with her through the doors, shutting them after me — and on the attic stair —according to that infant's sensible suggestion. "Up I went to the roof, shutting the trap-door behind me and snapping the iron bolt into the hasp. Then, when I was safe, I looked out over the fields, and there a mile away came a crowd of horsemen, riding like— comets. The noise down stairs was a bedlam, so I took the megaphone and called out: '''Come up the back stair, and you'll catch your men in a trap. They are in the third room on the left. A dozen hats waving told ' — me my message low is it was —had carried; and there s.ood in I the moonlight, and watched the men come nearer and nearer BY WAY OF THANKSGIVING. 61 while the noise below told me the thieves had found the attic stair, and were on my trail. "I didn't know how long that little bolt would hold against their blows; but I knew when it gave way there wouldn't be one chance in ten for me and the babe— especially if all of us were caught up there together when the trap was sprung from below. "I guess the surprise of the ambush below saved me; for all at — once I heard the hasp holding the bolt snap and then a rush of — feet— downward, not upward as I expected, and then such a babel below as I never thought could be. When at last a hand pushed up the trap-door, the face that looked at me was Jim's, — and then I fainted. "And that's why we called her Thankful; for if anybody had cause for special thanks that Thanksgiving day, it was Jim and me -and the baby. As for the Mayvilles — "That's another story." — well, as the writerfolks say Salt Lake City, Utah. A