Thanksgiving is a time for physical feasting and mental fasting. By the latter I mean trying to think out some of the problems of life which come as a sort of shade when we remember all our mercies. A bunch of these problems came up to me through a cloud of memories as I sat with my feet on the concrete and my collar turned up.  
It was a gray, raw, day—good Indian weather as it turned out. It seemed as if the sun had covered its face with a blanket in one of those fits of depression when the impulse is to hide the face from human eyes. Some 12,000 people were grouped—piled up tier above tier—around a great field marked out with long white stripes. It was a cold crowd, for all had their feet on a concrete floor. At one side a little band of college boys screamed and sang their songs, but for the most part this great crowd sat cold-eyed and . At one side of the field there was a dash of bright color where a group of Indians sat wrapped in big red blankets. Just across from these was another group of men with green blankets. Between them in the center of the field was a mass of 22 husky boys in red or green, all fighting for the possession of a football.
 
Ah, a football game! What is this so-called farmer doing, wasting part of the price of a barrel of apples when he ought to be at work? Of course it is my privilege to say, “That’s my business if I want to,” but I will answer by saying that I was renewing my youth and studying human nature. You can’t improve on either operation for a man of my age. Up some 250 miles nearer the Canadian line the boy had been one of the 1,000 yelling young who sent these green-clad boys down to meet the Indians. He could not come, but he wrote me, “Be sure to see the game; it will be a peach.” As a peach grower, I am interested in all new varieties, and this certainly turned out to be one. It must be said that these green-clad boys came down out of their hills with a spirit, wearing pride as as they will wear their first high hat. They had not lost a game, but had over two of the greatest colleges in the country. They represented the section where the purest-bred white Americans are to be found. One more victory and no one could deny their boast that they could stand any other football team on its head. So they came marching out on the field, very airy, very confident, and convinced of the great superiority of the white man!
 
I know very little about football. When I played it was more like a game of tag than a human . Here, however, was a round of the great human game which would make anyone thoughtful. Here were representatives of two races about to grapple. The great majority of the white thousands who watched them were unconcerned—for a New York audience is composed of so many races and tongues that it has little sentiment. All around me, however, there seemed up hundreds of swarthy, dark men whose eyes glittered as they watched the game. You could not realize how many there were with Indian and Negro blood until such a test of the white and red races was presented. Then you began to realize what a race question really means when the so-called inferior race gets a chance to test its real manhood on terms of equality.
 
It would have made a theme for a great historian as these young men lined up for the game. The whites out confident and proud. Why not? The “betting” favored them, their record was superior, as their race was supposed to be. The Indians slouched to their places and shambled through their motions, silent and without great show of confidence. It came to me as not at all unlikely that a few centuries before the ancestors of these boys had faced each other under very different circumstances. Francis Parkman, the historian, tells of a famous battle in the upper Connecticut Valley. The white settlers had built a as protection against roving bands of French and Indians. One day this fort was attacked by such a band, which had come down the valley capturing prisoners and booty. It was a fight, but the white men held their own, and finally a Frenchman came forward with a white flag for a . He actually offered to buy a supply of corn, as they were out of food, and then to retreat. In that gray mist, with my feet on the concrete, I could shut my eyes and see the ancestors of these football players. Stern white men, gun in hand, peering over the stockade, and silent red men creeping noiselessly out of the forest to pile up their booty in sight—as price for the corn. The frost on the leaves told them that Winter with all its cold and was approaching. Here were the necessities of life—a tremendous bargain. Yet back in the shadow of the woods were the captives—men, women and children—and the white settlers held out for them. For at that time, if not now, New England knew the value of a man to the nation. He was far above the dollar, even though the women and children would be a care and a danger.
 
In a way, something of the spirit of those grim old fighters lay in the hearts of these green-clad boys who had come down from these historic old hills. At that instant, at least, they, too, knew the value of a man. It was expressed by their little band of singers and cheerers led by the “cheer leaders”—the glory and fame of the good old college on the hill. You could not have bought one of these boys for $1,000,000.
 
On the other hand, these shambling and big-boned Indians seemed to have something of the same spirit in their hearts. Silent and impassive, they seemed for the moment to have cast off their college training and gone back to the fr............