Gratitude: It Makes Everything Taste Better

Charles Fulton Oursler Sr. (1893–1952) was an American journalist, playwright, editor, and writer. Like many Southerners of means, he was cared for as a boy by a nurse who had been born into slavery. It was she, he later recalled, who taught him an unforgettable lesson in gratitude.

I remember her as she sat at the kitchen table in our house—the hard, old, brown hands folded across her starched apron, the glistening eyes, and the husky old whispering voice saying, “Much obliged, Lord, for my vittles."…