5. _The general education of the people_ is another reason for thankfulness to God. The system is not yet universal, but it will be at no distant day. You boys will live to see the day when every man, woman and child born in the United States (except those who are too young or feeble-minded) will be able to read and write and cipher. It is sure to come. Then, under the blessing of God, when people learn to do their own reading and thinking, we shall not fear anarchists and atheists and the many other fools who, under one name or another, are now trying to make this people discontented with their lot. There is no need for such people here, and no place for them; they have made a mistake in coming to this free land, as some of them found to their cost on the gallows at Chicago. 6. _We have no war in our country, no famine, and with the exception of poor Jacksonville, Florida, no pestilence._ Famine we have never known, and with such an extent of country we have little need to dread such a scourge as that. No one need suffer for food in our country, and this is the only country in the world of which this can be said; for labor of some kind can always be found, and food is so cheap, plain kinds of food, that none but the utterly dissipated and worthless need starve; and in fact none do starve; for if they are so wretchedly improvident, the guardians of the poor will save them from suffering not only, but actually provide them with a home, that for real comfort is not known elsewhere in the world. Some of us have seen war in its most dreadful proportions, but even then the alleviations furnished by the Christian Commission greatly relieved some of its most horrid features; and we are not likely to see war again, for there will be hereafter nothing to quarrel and fight about. Our political differences will never again lead to the taking up of arms in deadly strife. Such are some of the occasions of thankfulness which led the President of the United States to ask the people, by public proclamation, to turn aside for one day from their business, their farms, their workshops, their counting-houses, to close the schools, and assemble in their places of worship and thank God, the giver of every good and perfect gift. But I don’t think the President of the United States knew what special reasons the Girard College boys have to keep a thanksgiving day. And I shall try in what I have yet to say to point out some of them.