The Athena press. [volume] (Athena, Umatilla County, Or.) 18??-1942, 1906-03-09

Everybody may not understand Just
what it means by being a farm boy,
but it is safe to say that nobody who
ever passed through the experience is
likely to forget it. The typical boy of
the pioneer period, from whom so
mahy of our national celebrities eyo-
luted, was character whose career
embraced much both of comic ard the
tragic. He slept in a garret or on a
trundlebed in corner devoted to
miscellaneous rubbish. He was always
the earliest riser, no matter how un-
godly the hour. His daily routine,
beginning before daylight and termin-
ating when he dropped half dead with
WEAKNESS into his lowly cot at in
the evening, may be thus summar-
ized: Beginning at daylight with
milking the COWS, before BREAKFAST he
had fed the stock and chopped an arm
full of wood; during the day when
not at work in the field or the clear
ing, he kept up repairs on the barn
and farming implements of the place.
He patched the harness of the horses,
half f-soled the shoes of the family, did
the hog killing at Christmas time,
picked the hams and smoked them,
made the sausage and souse, watched
the ash hopper and boiled the soap,
and on Saturday nights helped Aunt
Hanna darn stockings for the family.
To the farm boy in the olden times
fell most of the business of packing
eggs, butter, feathers, beeswax, gin
seng, mink and coon skins-whic b
constituted the legal tender of the
neighborhood at that day-and get
ting all these things ready to be sent
to market.
Hard as this life was and often ac-
companied by deprivation and cruel
ties, when the employer was of the
stingy and hardhearted class. it seems
to have constituted dicipline of
the most valuable kind. It is a law of
our being that we rise through strug
gle to efficiency. These boys, thus
hardened to all kinds of work and to
endurance equal to that of the ancient
Spartan, continued the embryo which
had in it the making of heroes. Sc
we're as it was, viewed from the boys
standpoint at the time. all men who
went through it looked back with
complacency upon the experience as
invaluable to their future success in
life. There are still thousands of
farm boys, but just what extent
modern improvements have contribut-.
ed to the amelioration of their condi-
tion it would be difficult to say. 1t is
probable that the march of progress
has not touched the farm boy to any
appreciable extent, and that he re-
mains substantially much like his
pioneer progenitor. At any rate, there
can be little doubt that in the lot are
the makings of many more success
full men of affairs. The child of
luxury, as is well known, seldom
amounts to anything. He either dies
j n infancy or perishes in early man
hood with diseased liver. All the
chances are against him, for the hard
est of all fortunes to fight is that of
being born with silver spoon in your
mouth. 1t seems to be the natural
law that success in the world awaits
those only who travelled the rocky
road of trial and tribulation in their
earlier years. Nothing that comes
easily is worth having, and none enjoy
the SOCIAL, d good things in life except
those who have reached them by the
painful process of self denial and re-
peated sacrifice.