The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1900-09-11
AUNT N LETTER.

Il like to look % the bright side
as much as possible" says Bess, in
her first letter to us. This assertion
tells US much of her disposition All
should learn this lesson for it in
the pleasures of life and
lightens many a burden. The bridges
we never cross span the darkest
streams. Troubles dreamed of al
ways seems the most irremediable.
Minute details are the causes Of
distraction. The mind should be
trained to grasp the most important
giving it first place leaving the
minor things to fall into their proper
place in the consideration, although
never ~neglecting or forgetting that
they are needful to the completion
of the whole.
In one very important sense the
ability to do this is the highest form
of education. The mission of schools
is to so train the mind that when
the responsibilities of life come the
student shall be able to see and act
in all matters with a keen sense of
the relative Importance of things.
A story illustrating this point is told
of William Hunt, the great land
scape painter.
He was giving lessons in painting
to one of his pupils. The young man
was making a sketch of a landscape
bathed in the sunset light of a sum-
mer day. In the foreground stood a
picturesque old barn. Mr.. Hunt
stood behind his pupil silently for a
few minutes watching him work.
Suddenly he stopped and put his hand
on the young painters arm. See
here, he said firmly, If you spend so
much time painting the. shingles on
a barn, you'll never have to paint
sunsets You'll have to choose
To choose between the shingle and
the sunset is not so easy as it at first
appears, but in all positions men
and women who accomplish the
greatest work are met by this prob
lem every day. Women are, Think,
more apt than men to waste time
painting shingles, but it is very
essential that they be painted, or
that the house have the appearance
of being covered with shingles, tiles,
or some other water proof material.
There are men in the world who
are always painting sunsets and any
thing Of less Importance seems far be-
meath their lordly consideration.
When I see a married woman who,
must cut her own wood with a dull
aXe and draw the water from a we'll
with a leaking bucket (and half the
time no bucket at all unless she fish
it out or tie another one on) I know
her husband is given to painting
sunsets and I see in my imagination
ar imperfect picture. No foreground
save the imperfect frame of a house
surrounded, if at all, by a fence
minus many planks-a wretched
dwelling place for one woman, all
because the entire time of her hus.
band is consumed in painting sun
sets. No picture is complete with
out a foreground. Do not deceive
yourself with the idea that a faith
fully portrayed sunset is salable
without the the proper accessories.
The world has strange taste it de-
mands perfection not in one thing
only but in many. You cannot
neglect the minor details and make
a perfect pibture. There are others
dependent on you for happiness, do
not, forgetting this, fail to paint the
shingles.
The life of G. P. Huntington illus
trates my idea. His whole life was
spent gaining dollars. No man loved
him, and he loved no man. Human
sympathy was not needed and conse-
quently not bestowed on others by
him. His sunset was dazzling-dol-
lars, dollars-in the foreground,
middle, distance, and back ground,
but where was all that beauty that
have been added by his brush
tolerance, brother1y love and hu-
man fellowship? Hislife for dollars,
his hereafter for dollars. Nothing
but a metallic brightness to his sun
set after all these years of toll. We
miss the divine glow that might
have radiated from his picture and
lighted the path of many of his fell