Mary Dan and I wish all of you a happy and healthy Thanksgiving. We hope you spend yours as we are spending ours with family and friends.
A new book is available this fall entitled The Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin. A descendant of Franklin’s wrote the book using original material from Ben’s letters and other writings. I haven’t read the book yet, but I plan to. Ben Franklin’s Autobiography is one of my favorite books, and one of the few that I reread from time to time. If the new book is as good as the original, it will be a real treasure.
I’ve taken the liberty to excerpt from The Compleated Autobiography the selection on the first Thanksgiving in its entirety.
Enjoy.

The Real Story of the First Thanksgiving

By Benjamin Franklin (1785)

There is a tradition that in the planting of New England, the first settlers met with many difficulties and hardships, as is generally the case when a civiliz’d people attempt to establish themselves in a wilderness country. Being so piously dispos’d, they sought relief from heaven by laying their wants and distresses before the Lord in frequent set days of fasting and prayer. Constant meditation and discourse on these subjects kept their minds gloomy and discontented, and like the children of Israel there were many dispos’d to return to the Egypt which persecution had induc’d them to abandon.

At length, when it was proposed in the Assembly to proclaim another fast, a farmer of plain sense rose and remark’d that the inconveniences they suffer’d, and concerning which they had so often weary’d heaven with their complaints, were not so great as they might have expected, and were diminishing every day as the colony strengthen’d; that the earth began to reward their labour and furnish liberally for their subsistence; that their seas and rivers were full of fish, the air sweet, the climate healthy, and above all, they were in the full enjoyment of liberty, civil and religious.

He therefore thought that reflecting and conversing on these subjects would be more comfortable and lead more to make them contented with their situation; and that it would be more becoming the gratitude they ow’d to the divine being, if instead of a fast they should proclaim a thanksgiving. His advice was taken, and from that day to this, they have in every year observ’d circumstances of public felicity sufficient to furnish employment for a Thanksgiving Day, which is therefore constantly ordered and religiously observed.

For those of you who will eat too much today, who are so predisposed, and who will agonize all night with heartburn and gastric reflux, check in tomorrow because I’m reviewing a book on how to successfully treat this most miserable of disorders.

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