Norwich bulletin., 1909-07-03
A FARMERS TALK TO FARMERS
How We Charge Up Unhappiuess and Evil to Human Ma ture- Opinionated Blindness s- How We Conclude and then Perform-Incidents- We Must Keep the Stairway of Mirth to See Alright.

me stop and look IL over 10 see now well his system works. It certainly was comfortably clean. There were a few weeds and a few spears of quack showing. But it was no worse, indeed rather better than the other enu or the field which has no quack- Jest hood 1t twice" he said "Once as near the May full O the moon as could and once at the June full" All could say was that he must have a different breed of Quack from mine. But later his small boy was over at my place after something and I remarked upon how nicely his fathers north lot of corn was looking. "Oughter look pret- ty well" answered the youngster. Dads out on 1t every day pullin' weeds and grass with his fingers" l turned the conversation; didn't want to use a mans own son to convict him. Just observe the "human nature" in all this. My neighbor isn't consciously deceiving himself nor trying to de- ceive me. He has got 1t into his nod dle that simply chopp3ng off quack- grass twice at the full of the moon will kill it- He goes out every day to make sure that he's right. Oh, of course, there'n be a few spears. here and there. So he pulls lem up. Next day there's just few more; nothing to ~~~~~ them up. He continues pulling and keeps his patch clean. He is correct in saying that he has ''hoed 1t" but twice. It never occurs to him that he has 'shand-weeded" 1t a dozen or two times. Yet he is really doing more work to keep the stun down than I'm doing to kill 1t, and kill 1t 50 1t will stay dead. No, he's not ''cracked" nor weak in the upper story" He's simply set his brains to run round and round on a circular track, like a boys toy train. He finds what he's looking for, sees what he expects to see; his vision takes in just the interior of a predetermined arc, and is blind to the great, wide world of unpredicted and unexpected and often mysterious goings-on outside tbat limit. But it'e no way to learn the game Here we are, dropped down, each one of us, on our little patches of land. under our narrow horizons of sky each one of us, 50 far as he is con- cerned. the center of a universe full of strange things We work on dirt turtles of chemical and physical change, and whose composition varies with every rood, as the varying processes of millions of years have made and re-made 1t. We are surrounded with vegetable life of ten thousand forms and habits. the origin of which is a mystery to us. and the renewal of which we cannot understand or ex- plain. We are under climatic and meteorological conditions which are as much beyond our present control as the movements of Polaris or Arcturus. Beneath us and above us and all around us are strange, elusive infiu-, ences, some seemingly benevolent, some seemingly malevolent. They help us or hinder us; make or mar our work; sometimes push powerfully be- hind us towards success, sometimes buffet us back to failure.
 Some few things about the world we've learned; over some few condi- tions we have secured a modified con- trol; some few influences we have managed to harness to our service. But oh, the little we really knowi and oh, the little we can really do, as com pared with the vast and awe-inspiring immenaities of time and space thaf stretch endlessly about usi What folly for me to attempt to measure Gods great universe with my yard sticki What worse than folly for me to shut my eyes to any light which may come to me unless it comes through some one particular knot h%el
 " we are ever going to get any where, if we are ever going to learn our lessons. we must do 1t by keeping our eyes and ears wide open all the time to all that comes to them. We must keep our minds impartial and unbiased, always surceptfve to the truth, no matter whether the truth be what we wanted or hoped or expected. or just the opposite. There's no use trying to trclose summer with a board fence. or dam back the Atlantic tide with sandbank. The opinion of one man, the opinions of ali men. are absolutely worthless as against one small but solid fact. It is only as we get hold of real facts that we progress. Like a great stairway climbing from the earth into the in- finite, we rise from step to step. each tread firmly footed enabling us to lift ourselves to the next But we must keep to the stairway of truth, and moi attempt to hasten our ascent by step- ping off one side on to some fog bank or prejudice. THE FARMER.