Our Thanksgiving turkey this year will be a goose—or rather a pair of geese. As you read this they will be browning and sizzling in the oven, with plenty of “sage and onion” to stuff in the desired quality. They will come to the table flanked by half a dozen vegetables and backed by several big pies. I shall resign the position of carver, remembering my old experience with the roast duck and the minister. The duck got away from my knife, and slid all over the table, ending by upsetting the in front of the minister’s plate. After the usual objections Mother will apply the knife to the geese, secretly proud of her skill as an anatomist. She can do everything with a roasted goose except provide white meat. Since Nature not to that in the breast of a goose, man cannot supply it. Therefore the lady must content herself with brown meat. I’ll guarantee that most blind men eating the white breast of a turkey and then the brown breast of a goose would call for more of the latter. It is something like this rather foolish preference for white-shelled eggs. Like “the Colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady,” they are sisters under the shell! Anyway, a goose, well stuffed and roasted, is a thank-offering well suited to the Hope Farm table.  
No doubt as we pour the thick brown gravy over Mother’s generous slices Mr. Gander will lead his family across the lawn and find something to be thankful for. I have learned, this Summer, to have great respect for Gander and his wife, the gray goose. Nature may have left the white meat out of the goose in order to prepare a finer delicacy, but she put an extra quantity of gray matter into the goose brain. It seems to me that Mr. Gander and his able assistant are about the most successful teachers of youth I have ever known. To many a learned educator I would say, “Go to the goose, thou wise man, and learn how to train the young for a successful life.” Take this young bird, whose meat is rapidly disappearing from the Thanksgiving altar. Mother has scraped the bones nearly clean. What little will be boiled out as soup. This bird has lived what I may call an successful life. He ends his career in the highest place possible to be conceived of in the philosophy of a goose. He was trained and educated from the start, and as I look at Gander and goose on the lawn I cannot think of any human teachers who have had any greater success in training their charges into just what a man or woman ought to be.
 
In the Spring the gray goose selected a place in the old barn and laid 21 eggs. We rather expected more, but the goose was master of ceremonies. She came back to the same place each day, and finally we found her there like the steam escaping from a broken pipe. It was her signal that she was ready to serve as incubator. So we put 13 eggs under her and eight more under a big Red hen. This big hen was a great failure as a layer, but as nurse and incubator she had proved a wonder. She had raised three broods of chicks with great success. Surely she ought to be a better guide and teacher of youth than a young goose with her first brood! If you were selecting teachers for your children would you not choose those who have had experience? In due time, and on the same day, the goose walked out with 10 goslings, while the Red hen sat on her nest and compelled five to stay under her. The two broods kept apart. The hen was evidently disappointed with the way the goose handled children, and she punished her brood whenever they tried to with their own brothers and sisters. They all lived, but after about eight weeks I noticed a strange thing. The hen’s brood, though eating the same food, would average at least 30 per cent than the goslings which ran with the goose. There was no question about it—the hen’s charges were inferior in size and weight and in “common sense,” or the art of looking out for themselves.
 
There being no chance for an argument about it, I concluded that it was very largely a matter of education, and we began to study the methods of teaching employed by Mr. and Mrs. Gander and Mrs. Red Hen. The first thing we noticed was the influence of the male side of the family. Roger Red, the big rooster, paid no attention to his wife’s family. All he did was to mount the fence and crow, or go gallivanting off after worms or seeds. If one of the goslings got in his way he kicked it to one side and gave not even a suggestion to his busy wife. He was like one of those men who will not even wheel the baby carriage, but make the wife carry the child. On the other hand, Mr. Gander was a true head of the family. He kept right with the goose, brooded part of the flock at night, fought off rats and even a weasel, and was ready to battle with a or a cat. In time of danger the rooster ran for shelter, but the gander stepped right out in front of his brood with his wing extended like a prizefighter’s arm, and that great bill open to nip a piece of flesh out of the enemy. He taught his children to graze on weeds and grass. When anyone forgot to feed them the gander wasted no time in complaint. He led his family right into the garden, where they picked up their share. He led the goslings through the wet grass and into the , where they cleaned out all the watercress and weeds. On the other hand, the hen hung around the barnyard and cried if breakfast did not come on time. She would not let her children through the wet grass or get into the water, and she did not know that a young goose can eat grass like a . The hen worried herself insane when her family followed the natural instincts of geese and headed for the brook.
 
Now, Mrs. Hen is not the first teacher who has failed to understand the first law of education—to train a child properly you must understand his natural instincts and tendencies and build upon them. For many generations the hen has feared water, and has been taught that all feathered young must be kept away from it. I have no doubt that a race of swimming hens could be developed, provided the fear of water could be taken from the mind of the hen. For the hen must swim with her mind before she can swim with her feet! I have seen many cut-and-dried teachers as much afraid of the truth as this big Red hen was afraid of water. At any rate, we learned why one set of goslings was far superior to the ............