Thanksgiving dinner was good.  Pa had shot a wild goose for it.  Ma had to stew the goose because there was no fireplace, and no oven in the little stove.  But she made dumplings in the gravy.  There were corn dodgers and mashed potatoes.  There were butter, and milk, and stewed dried plums.  And three grains of parched corn lay beside each tin plate.

At the first Thanksgiving dinner the poor Pilgrims had had nothing to eat but three parched grains of corn.  Then the Indians came and brought them turkeys, so the Pilgrims were thankful.

Now, after they had eaten their good, big Thanksgiving dinner, Laura and Mary could eat their grains of corn and remember the Pilgrims.

~Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Banks of Plum Creek

What a beautiful world this is! Have you noticed the wonderful coloring of the sky at sunrise? For me there is no time like the early morning, when the spirit of light broods over the earth at its awakening. What glorious colors in the woods these days! Did you ever think that great painters have spent their lives trying to reproduce on canvas what we may see every day? Thousands of dollars are paid for their pictures which are not so beautiful as those nature gives us freely. The colors in the sky at sunset, the delicate tints of  the early spring foliage, the brilliant autumn leaves, the softly colored grasses and lovely flowers– what painter ever equalled their beauties with paint and brush?

Laura’s Sunset (Viewed from Rocky Ridge Farm)

Excerpt from “An Autumn Day” by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Missouri Ruralist, October 20, 1916

She thought: Americans won’t obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa, he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn’t anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good.

Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means, you have to be good. “Our father’s God, author of liberty –“ The laws of Nature and of Nature’s God endow you with a right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God’s law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free.

Excerpt from Little Town on the Prairie, Chapter 8, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

“We fought for Independence, son,” Father said. “But all the land our forefathers had was a little strip of country, here between the mountains and the ocean. All the way from here west was Indian country, and Spanish and French and English country. It was farmers that took all that country and made it America.”

“How?” Almanzo asked.

“Well, son, the Spaniards were soldiers, and high-and-mighty gentlemen that only wanted gold. And the French were fur-traders, wanting to make quick money. And England was busy fighting wars. But we were farmers, son; we wanted the land. It was farmers that went over the mountains, and cleared the land, and settled it, and farmed it, and hung on to their farms.

“This country goes three thousand miles west, now. It goes ‘way out beyond Kansas, and beyond the Great American Desert, over mountains bigger than these mountains, and down to the Pacific Ocean. It’s the biggest country in the world, and it was farmers who took all that country and made it America, son. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Excerpt from Farmer Boy, Chapter 16, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura was jerked out of sleep. The bedroom was dark. Carrie asked in a thin, scared whisper, “What was that?”

“Don’t be scared,” Laura answered. They listened. The window was hardly gray in the dark, but Laura could feel that the middle of the night was past.

BOOM! The air seemed to shake.

“Great guns!” Pa exclaimed sleepily.

“Why? Why?” Grace demanded. “Pa, Ma, why?”

Carrie asked, “Who is it? What are they shooting?”

“What time is it?” Ma wanted to know.

Through the partition Pa answered, “It’s Fourth of July, Carrie.” The air shook again. BOOM!

It was not great guns. It was gunpowder exploded under the blacksmith’s anvil, in town. The noise was like the noise of battles that Americans fought for independence. Fourth of July was the day when the first Americans declared that all men are born free and equal. BOOM!

Excerpt from Little Town on the Prairie, Chapter 8, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I understand it’s a different time now; the world can be a dangerous place.  Even as I sat there slightly annoyed that no one was stopping, I acknowledged that it might not be safe for me if the wrong person stopped to “help.”   And it’s not like I have a right to complain that no one helped me, I can’t think of a time when I’ve stopped to help a stranger on the road either.

Maybe that’s one of the problems, in Laura’s time people in communities were probably more familiar with each other and therefore felt more responsible for helping each other out.  Laura once wrote, “Sweet are the uses of adversity when it shows us the kindness in our neighbors’ hearts.”
Some of the 50 cars that passed me by…yes, I counted…might have been my neighbors – I was less than 2 miles from home – but they didn’t know it so I didn’t get a chance to find out about the kindness that might have been in their hearts.  I would never pass by someone I knew but it’s easy to speed on by a stranger and assume someone else will help them out.

I wonder if that’s one of the reasons so many of us are drawn to the Little House books and Laura’s Ruralist articles; the sense of community, people helping people.  Yes, the theme of the LH books is self sufficiency but would they have really been able to be so “self sufficient” without the help of their neighbors and charity coming from friends?  I know many people still experience this today; maybe I’m jaded because I’ve always lived in large metropolitan areas rather than small towns.  I can’t help but feel, though, that things and people were different in Laura’s day. 

Luckily, I have something Laura didn’t – AAA.  I can pay for the type of help that used to be freely given and eventually the flat tire (and the flat spare) were changed and I was on my way once again.  I can’t say that I’ll stop on a lonely stretch of road to help out a stranded stranger anytime soon but maybe it’s time to get to know some of my neighbors.

I feel sure Mrs. A had intended to create a disturbance but she might as well have tried to break a feather pillow by beating as to have any effect with her angry voice and manner on the perfect kindness and good manners which met her. She only made herself ridiculous and in self defense was obliged to change her attitude.

Since then I have been wondering if it always is so, if shafts of malice aimed in anger forever fall harmless against the armor of a smile, kind words and gentle manners. I believe they do. And I have gained a fuller understanding of the words, “A soft answer turneth away wrath.” Until this incident I had found no more in the words than the idea that a soft answer might cool the wrath of an aggressor, but I saw wrath turned away as an arrow deflected from its mark and came to understand that a soft answer and a courteous manner are an actual protection.

Nothing is ever gained by allowing anger to have sway. While under its influence we lose the ability to think clearly and the forceful power that is in calmness.

Anger is a destructive force; its purpose is to hurt and destroy, and being a blind passion its does its evil work, not only upon whatever arouses it, but also upon the person who harbors it. Even physically it injures him, impeding the action of the heart and circulation, affecting the respiration and creating an actual poison in the blood. Persons with weak hearts have been know to drop dead from it and always there is a feeling of illness after indulging in a fit of temper.

Anger is a destroying force. What all the world needs is its opposite, an uplifting power.

“As a Farm Woman Thinks,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Published in the Missouri Ruralist, November 1, 1921

Every day is showing more plainly that Hira Singh was right and that his statement is true in more ways than the author meant. It is a fact that not only is it a “war in each man’s heart,” but that the issues of this war are being fought over in the hearts of all the people—men, women and children.

The keynote of the statement of the nation’s war aims, made by President Wilson recently, was unselfishness, an unselfish championing of the rights of nations too small to defend themselves and of people who have been oppressed so long they are helpless.

As a nation we stand for unselfishness, courage and self-sacrifice in defence of the right. Our soldiers are fighting on the battlefields that these principles shall be recognized as governing the nations of the world. And our hearts are the battlefields where these same qualities strive to become rulers of our actions.

It is indeed a “war in each man’s heart,” and as the battles go in these hearts of ours so will be the victory or defeat of the armies in the field, for a nation can be no greater than the sum of the greatness of its people. There never before has been a war where the action of each individual had such a direct bearing on the whole world.

One of the liveliest skirmishes of which I know takes place when our spirit of patriotism and duty comes in conflict with our instinct of hospitality, for here a seeming generosity to those near at hand blinds us to the fact that in these days when we feed those who are not hungry we are stealing from those who are starving, even tho the food is our own.

We are all in the habit of feeding our friends when we entertain them and we feel we have failed as hosts if we do not offer our guests the usual feast of good things. Now is our opportunity to substitute for this the “feast of reason and the flow of soul” which is the only thing that makes the meeting of friends worth while. Now is our chance to see that the food and the companionship are placed in their proper relation to each other, with the food, of course, secondary.

The refreshments at an evening gathering during the holidays were brown bread sandwiches and coffee. The entertainment is an annual affair and altho elaborate refreshments always were served in previous years, the evening was a bigger success this year than ever before.

“Victory May Depend on You,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Published in the Missouri Ruralist, February 20, 1918

Shep was trying to learn to sit up and shake hands, but try as he would he could not seem to get the knack of keeping his balance in the upright position. He was an old dog and you know it has been said that, “It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks.” No sympathy has ever been wasted on the dog but I can assure you that it also is hard for the old dog. After a particularly disheartening session one day, we saw him out on the back porch alone and not knowing that he was observed he was practicing his lesson without a teacher. We watched while he tried and failed several times, then finally got the trick of it and sat up with his paw extended. The next time we said, “How do you do, Shep,” he had his lesson perfectly. After that it was easy to teach him to fold his paws and be a “Teddy Bear” and to tell us what he said to tramps. We never asked him to lie down and roll over. He was not that kind of a character. Shep never would do his tricks for any one but us, tho he would shake hands with others when we told him to do so. His eyesight became poor as he grew older and he did not always recognize his friends. Once he made a mistake and barked savagely at an old friend whom he really regarded as one of the family tho he had not seen him for some time. Later as we all sat in the door yard, Shep seemed uneasy. Evidently there was something on his mind. At last he walked deliberately to the visitor, sat up and held out his paw. It was so plainly an apology that our friend said: “That’s all right Shep old fellow! Shake and forget it!” Shep shook hands and walked away perfectly satisfied.

My little French Poodle, Incubus, is blind. He used to be very active and run about the farm; but his chief duty, as he saw it, was to protect me. Altho he cannot see, he still performs that duty, guarding me at night and flying at any stranger who comes too near me during the day. Of what he is thinking, when he sits for long periods in the yard, with his face to the sun, I am too stupid to understand perfectly, but I feel that in his little doggy heart, he is asking the eternal, “Why?” as we all do at times. After awhile he seemingly decides to make the best of it and takes a walk around the familiar places, or comes in the house and does his little tricks for candy with a cheery good will. If patience and cheerfulness and courage, if being faithful to our trust and doing our duty under difficulties count for so much in man that he expects to be rewarded for them, both here and hereafter, how are they any less in the life of my little blind dog? Surely such virtues in animals are worth counting in the sum total of good in the universe.

Excerpt from “A Dog’s a Dog for A’ That,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Published in the Missouri Ruralist, August 20, 1916