Norwich bulletin., 1909-02-06

l (Written Specially for The Bulletin ) | like to hear what other folks think about farming, as well as to fire off
 my own mouth" on the fascinating subject. And it's a source of never ending amusement to me to observe { how many different things different people think they see when they're all
 looking at the same identical pumpkin. ' A Harvard professor has lately been making a really scientific study of the value of evidence. He has demonstrat- ed that, as a matter of cold mathe- nautical fact, the best attested evidence, most solmenly sworn to, most skill fully sifted, most honestly given, is liable to percentage of error which makes it always unsafe to accept with out reservation. Certainly the testi- mony of farmers to farm conditions is about as mixed a mess as was ever compounded.
 For instance, | had just read in an agricultural paper the other day the unqualified, dogmatic, '1-know what Pm -talking-about' assertion that NO business pays as well today as the well kept farm" when in another agricul tural paper l bumped up against the equally unqualified. dogmatic, '1know- what I'm talking about" assertion that the American farmer is today the
 AAclA dNSN hOAhC0 anu lllO0N AAAOCA pau citizen"
 Both these statements came from farmers: both were manifestly intend ed to be the truth; both were made with equal positiveness and absence of qualifications. And yet both can't possibly be right.
 Now suppose I wasn't farmer; was a mechanic or a clerk or a business man in town, and wanted to find out the facts about life on a farm; after reading a few such contradictions as these, wouldn't I be in much the con- dition of the new congressman from the south, who, after listening for hours to the speeches of partisans who made out that black was white and yellow and sky-blue and several other colors, cried out in bewilderment: MT. Speaker, where are we at?"
 It won't do to assume that men who make such diametrically opposite state- ments are lying. Their very earnest ness is proof that they mean what they say. We must take their honesty for granted at the start off Nevertheless they can't both be telling the truth. What Is the explanation?
 think it will take two paragraphs to explain 'em. In the first place, they both belong to that unfortunately large class of men who cant see beyond their own noses, or outside the circum- ference of their own hat-brims. They may both be bright enough in many ways, but they both lack something. mentally. They are not intellectually capable of using their own eyes and ears properly. Perhaps they were born so; perhaps they have, unconsciously, trained themselves into the habit of looking down and not up; within and not outward. They see what they think they see, not what actually is. Some times they see what they want to see, not what they ought to see. They can't get out of themselves. What they are, they assume others must be; what they do, others must do: what they suffer, others must endure. They seem to feel that, whenever one of them stubs his toe, every farmer from Passport to Astoria must go lame. Or, whenever one of them has had a good dinner and is feeling comfortable, as if everybody else must, also, be in tune for singing Hallelujahs. Herein, it seems to me, lies the explanation why these people can't see straight.
 Then, in the second place, they set forth the results of their wrong vision with dogmatic and offensive intoler- ance because they are naturally big 
 tellectual lack rather than an ethical perversity. Indeed, the longer I live and the more I see of men the more certain I am that falsehOod is oftener due to mental incompetence than to moral obliquity. Of course, every fel- low is a very important parsonage to himself. But, considering all the other people in all the rest of the world. not one of us but is a dinl1y little toad in a mighty big puddle. And the puddle hasn't dried up just be- cause one toad's back gets out of the water.
 Truth generally lives between the extremes of partisan prejudices. Drive slow and keep the middle of the road' is very good advice in other matters beside horsemaushfp. Here for instance is a man who rushes into print with his first years experience in sheep raising to show how profita- ble 1t is for the small farmer. He belongs in the southwest somewhere where his sheep live solely on pasture till well along in January" On the