A Thanksgiving Idol

The air was keen and frosty and the snow lay ankle deep,

While my father in his arm chair wakened from his “dinner sleep”;

‘Twas two days before Thanksgiving and the turkeys roosted high,

While the roosters in the hen-yard were uncommon quick and spry.

“In the morning,” said father, looking skyward with a frown,

“Scar’ thet turkey from the treetop, arter which you run him down.”

For a month we’d fed him richly and he grew both fat and sleek,

And we called him each our idol as we watched him week by week.

Bright and early in the morning after “Thomas” I did go,

And the idol of our henyard scaled himself down in the snow;

Then with long and rapid reaches did he stalk up through the wood,

And I slipped and sprawled behind him fast as anybody could.

Over rocks and under fences, through the underbrush he went,

And I followed on in anger, with my strongest words all spent;

And I chased and chased our idol over hill and through the dale,

While a dozen times I seized him by his tightly folded tail.

But I nothing got but feathers, and I cried for him to stop,

But he only gobbled louder and increased his bounding hop.

On and on I chased our idol, then I noticed as we flew,

That his step became unsteady and his feathers looser grew.

By and by I saw him stagger, then collapse all in a heap,

And I raised some bone and feathers from the snow bank drifted deep;

For he’d run his flesh to nothing – once the king of fattest birds, –

And I carried him to father, but he thought too deep for words.

Oct. 4, ‘92

Boston Courier, Nov. 20,       (moral: chase not your idol too far.)

           1892