Norwich bulletin., 1909-10-09

I
 reckless-hit- or miss chaps. They're
 bright enough, mentally; they're clever
 enough with their hands. But they're | needless, negligent, improvident, slov-
 enly in method, disregardful of details. They're either so long-sIghted that
 they can't see anything short of the
 middle of next week, or so short
 sighted that they can't see beyond
 their noses. They waste the whole
 rope by neglecting to tie up the loose
 ends; they lose most of their profits by
 slurring little details. Why, I find,
 reckoning all my fields together and
 year by year, that it takes fully 75 per
 cent. Of the crops to pay for the cost l of producing them. If I waste 20 per
 cent. by careless handling or neglect ! of small savings here and there, or l disregard of my opportunities in culti- vation and marketing, I'm losing four fifths of my proper profit. It seems to me bad judgment to raise crops just to
 get back ones outlay. It certainly is ! beastly poor farming.
 And yet my observation leads me to | think that the farmer who loses most | of his possible gains through sheer
 recklessness and slovenliness is a very | common sort. We've all been preach- | ed to for years about our carelessness | in the storing of our tools. Many of i us deserve castigation for that bad 1 habit. But there are a thousand oth-
 CT ways in which improvidence mani fests itself Some years ago a neigh
 bor came with his engine and thresher | to cleal up some oats for me. 1 was | away when he began work. The handi-' est place to set up lis engine had | seemed to be under thrifty apple
 tree. So he rut it there. When I ar rived I found the smoke and heated
 air belching snortingly through the en- l it none" was the reply to my re-
 nonstrance. may jest scorch d few twigs little" Result, next spring, one-half of the three dead and the
 other half so discouraged it's borne nothing but cider apples since Now | that man wasn't any more careless
 with my orchard than he would have | been with his own. I don't wonder any
 more that he doesn't make farming
 pay.
 Another time another neighbor and myself ".swapped work" at having time. | He broke his moving machine within an hour after beginning work by a piece of open-eyed recklessness, and lost a full day in securing and adjust ing the necessary repairs. He broke ! a good pitchfork, next day by throw | ing 1t off the load on to a rock. He lost @ good half load of hay by refus- ing to nov close to thickets and in fence corners. He borrowed a mon key wrench to tighten up a bolt and l found 1t, two years later, when I broke a section in my own machine by striking 1t where he had thrown it l into the moWn grass and forgotten it. He was just as indifferent in his own fields as in mine. I don't wonder any more that his farm is mortgaged and the interest overdue.
 One neighbor came to me, the other day, to borrow a crowbar. Mines lost" he explained. When he return ed the tool, I asked him whose bar was lying under'a choke-cherry bush by the bars of his corner lot. By gum, that's mine" he answered.; left it there last spring when I was settin' a new post" And I actually believe he would nave continued tv leave it there, if hadn't suggested that right then was good time to take it home, 90 he could know where it was. An- other farmer near me spent several days last fall, with three helpers, hunting down small herd of young stock which had escaped from his swamp pasture and were running wild in the woods. One of them got killed; two others evaded capture till snow came, and he then gave one of the two to a hunter for 'tolling" them to d nay DdTU dilu them. All because he couldn't bother" with a bit of what he knew to be poor fence.
 And so on, case after case, loss and iujury resulting from sheer improvi- dence and recklessness. Is it any wonder that such men can't make farming "pay?" Is it any wonder that they are sour and discontented? Is 1t any wonder that they are always lon the offside.' always growing. always obstacles to local improvement and stumbling blocks in the path of prog ress?
 It would be wonder if they were anything else!
 we make ourselves. We owe some of our kussedness as well as some of our graces to our father and grandfathers, our mothers and grandmothers. And we owe so much to what the philoso- phers call our environment. A sheep is sheep because its father and moth- CT were sheep; and it's fat sheep or a poor one according to whether or no its environment is good pasture and plenty of grain or 8. course in starvation But men are, in some ways different from sheep, and they can, if they will, measurably overcome the taints of he- reality and measurably influence the warpinigs of environment. All the taking thought in the world won't add a cubit to a mans stature; but the taking of little thought, now and then, will add a good many dollars to his years income
 Seems to me man is just bit of sneak, whether he be farmer or O lawyer, when he understaKes to shuck off his own shoulders upon his fathers memory the responsibility for his own shortcomings. And isn't he little bit weak if he lays all the blame for his losses and failure on circumstances, when some, at least of the circum- stances are of his own making or rul- inP2