Norwich bulletin., 1909-09-18


 I've been chuckling for a week ovei a letter from friend who has a tidy garden of his own, which he has run successfully for thirteen years. But this year he is "up against it. His speciality is in fiowers-mostly bull bous-and he reports practical failure with them. The very crab-apples have found the season too tough for them T don't know what 1 know about farming" he confesses. fThe only thing I've learned is to take results as they come without fuss or fret ting"
 If he has really got to that height of self-control, he has learned what is. on the whole, the most valuable lesson. practical farming can teach, l fancy. I know he's honest in saying 1t, and I hope he is equally correct. How I wish some of my neighbors could learn that same lesson! How I wish I could pass perfect in an ex- animation along that line! But I'm a poor, weak critter" myself, and sometimes catch myself fretting and fussing and worrying over things l can't help. All l can boast of per sonaliy, is that when do catch my self at that sort of stiffness. I repent and reform. There are those who can't see anything in 1t to repent of A, And tsI. I do iP.ti think I'm one gra' ahead
 By the way, when mentioned that this friends chief interest was in fower-raising, perhaps some of you sneered at the idea of calling such an occupation agriculture. Well, sheer if you want to, but you'd show more wisdom if you didn't. Two years ago I netted $7 from two rows of gladioli, occupying a bit of garden six feet wide by one hundred feet long. That's at the rate of about s72 an acre. clear profit, after all expenses were paid Which would be at the rate of about $7.200 clear profit from a hundred acres Any farmer in eastern Con- necticut who is making a bigger profit than that, per hundred acres from what he calls farming has my free permission to sheer at flower growing as a part of agriculture. If he isn't making that much. will he please wipe the sheer off his face and look pleas ant?
 But the one phrase in my friends letter which keeps me chuckling is that T don't know what I know about farming" You bet he doesn't. Nor does anybody else. If a man were as wise as Solomon and as strong as Samson and as rich as Croesus and lived as long as Methusaleh, I suspect he might, along toward his nine hun dredth year, begin to get some suspi- eion about a few primary school les sons in farming. But even such a man, l thtnk, would be mighty shy In bragging about his knowledge. He'd find the ocean of his ignorance so much vaster than the beach-line of his knowledge that he would be the first to kneel before that Immeasur- able Unknown and humbly pray to the | Infinite Wisdom: Lord, be mercifuI | to me, a fool" !
 I'm not Solomon, mentally, nor a | Samson, physically. But all my life | I've striven to find the causes of | things. I've always wanted to know | the why of everything that hap | pened to me or my work The result | Is that I've cracked my thick skull so | mahy times against so many unscal- | eele cliffs of mystery that I'm begin | ming to wonder whats the use of | brains, anyway. I've reached that | pass where I'm ready to go to school l to a woodchuck or a Whip-poor- will each one of which indubitably knows | more about one thing than I do. | There are more things in heaven and earth. Horatio, than are dreamed of
  out Of that and there are more things fn earth and air and water than a l Mohammed could dream of in a cen tury. And he once dreamed seven years of busy life while the water in | an overturned pitcher was running out
 Every year that 1 work in farm or garden ! come up. bump. against some | new barrfcade. Then rises the oues- ton; how to get over it, or under it. | or around it. Every season confronts | me with some new enigma which I | must solve or suffer Let it be | Frankly admitted. right here and now. | that l generally suffer, and seldom | solve One season the trouble may be | comparatively harmless, and another | it may be vicious as Satan and pile | disaster on disaster. I'm like my cor ie";endont: the longer ..te the | .ci ter gets the lis: of what I don't | Knew and the small 1T grows the cat elogue of what once thought knew. still cling to the belief that hens | eggs will sometimes hatch into chick | ems. But, if one should, next spring. | hatch out bean stalk or a barrel ,9f | flour while I should be surprised | should take it philosophically and say: Well. that's another on me; what | next, I wonder?" I've had things han pen amost as absurdly impossible as | that according to the '1aws'' laid down by the scientific gentlemen. This present season has, certainly, been a freak in more ways than one Weeks of soaking downpour have been