The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1896-04-01
The Curse of Shiftlessness.

Shiftlessness is not so much bodily
defect as mental habit. There was
published in the Homestead, recently,
story of young farmer, of the most
confirmed type of shiftlessness, who
became very anxious to secure the
daughter of neighboring farmer for
his wife. But her father forbade the
match, because he we'll knew the habits
of the young man and what a curse it
would be to him. The fellow learned
how matters stood, and it awoke in him
determination to break off his shift
iieess ways. Love did what no ether
power seemed able to do, and the young
man became one of the best farmers in
that section and secured the girl for his
wife. The late DR.. James G. Jackson
of Evansville, N. Y, told story of
farmer whom he knew wh) was fast
going to ruin through his slack meth
DDS. One day in the winter he thought
he saw deer's horns sticking out of
the snow. He got his gun and went
out to it, when it turned out to be the
handles of his plow, which he had l,f
standing in the furrow in the fall. He
dragged the pillow to the barn, got his
whip and gave himself good whip
ping. That was the turning-point in
his life. He put off that day his slack
ways and became an energetic and in
dustrious farmer. Upon this subject
the Country Gentleman prints an article
by Galen Wilson, which at least ought
to set farmers who are parents to think
ing. Mr.. Wilson says:
Shiftlessness on farms causes more
financial loss than drouths, freezes and
cyclones combined. When any of these
Affections devastate any section the sym.
pathies of the entire country are
aroused, but people seem blind to de.
struction of property occurring all
about them in consequence of shift
lessness, which, in most instances, is
not sporadic and temporary, but gen.
eral, constitutional and apparently
past cure.
Revisiting place this season where
formerly passed some time, called
on farmer knew, and who Is reputed
to be the LATEST man in that section.
He is about sixty years of age, strong
and healthy. He was sitting on the
doorstep, his clothing ragged and dirty,
hair long and matted, and his beard
and shirt-fron bedaubed with tobacco
juice. The house fence was partly pros
trated, gate swung on one hinge,
boards off the barn; moving machine,
two wagons, sled and all his large
farming implements were out of doors;
and he always keeps them thus. The
it rains the most valuable part of the
manure runs down the road gutter in
black streak. His farm embraces sixty
acres of naturally good land, and off
this he manages, or rather mismanages,
to make very poor living The drouth
had been severe in that section this
season, affecting all farmers seriously.
He commenced at once to lament the
long drouth and late spring freeze, say.
ing: "My crops are about ruined and
1 cannot see how l am going to get
through the winter. 1t is terrible af-
Fiction"
Knowing the man, and knowing l
could not anger him, replied: Mr..
B, you have a worse affection right
here at home every season than
drouth, an unreasonable freeze or even
a cyclone. You are diseased past cure.
Look at your PROSTATE fences, all your
farm machinery, tools and implements
rotting in the weather, your land not
half titled, and your manure running