Norwich bulletin., 1910-05-21

IWritten Specially for The BullctIn.>
 If were making an alnansc for city folks, should put in the wett. [ CT predictions" column in May these words: About now expect attacks of Back-to- the Farm fever"
 This is the time that the thing which Is known as the charm of the coun- CTS beside the asphalt. By the way, what is your idea of that charm Of the country" The city MT. or Mrs. or Miss means by il, ordinarily, the Velvety green of the young meadows, spreading and rolling in lawn-like yer duFe to the hills, themselves gay and fnviting in sheir clean dresses of fresh teafage. The contrasts in greenery, running from the yellowish tints of hsle white birches and willows through characteristic shades which belong to the oaks and beeches down to the all most gloomy darkness of the pines, the whole punctuated here and there with vivid SplasheS of crimson and scarlet where young naples are glory ing in their first leaves-an these af Hord a delight to the color loving eye. 1t is all so trim, too. The roadside weeds haven't yet grown big enough to be ragged and dirty; the trees still show the symme etrical shape of their branch systems, which summer foliage rviH hide; the fields haven't the un- coTnbed look they will wear later, with uneven clunps of grass and blotches
 
 Is all restful to the eye Nothing is glaring or straining to the vision. Even the titled fields, with their soft coloring of natural khaki, only faintly Etreaked mottled as yet with just Epringing crops, are in harmony with all the rest. don't wonder look out of my window this gray morning on the gracious and spacious beauty which the reluctant spring is slowly spreading over knoll and intervale and evamp and mountainsideI don't won der that my city cousins yearn tow ards it.
 But let them remember that spring comes but once year Before they surrender completely to her evanescent and annual temptation, I beg them to consider whether it is just this aspect Of the country which draws them, just this one phase and this alone For the country has more than one or two faces to turn upon her lovers. She is at times aHuring sweetheart and brooding mother and tantalizing CO., quette. She is also at times capable of nagging like a common Scold, of hatly denying all her fair promises like a common liar, and of bludgeoning all common ruffian. Unless you are sure, beforehand, that you can enjoy her emiab1e moods just as much as if you didn't have to endure also her ir- slow" Most anybody can live in the country in May-but how about next December and March?
 Far be it from me to lay one need less obstruction in the path of those who are bound back to the farm. Nor do I want to be understand as sneer- ing at or in the least underwriting the sen ntiment which lures city dwellers to the green fields. But there are all sorts of places in this world and it takes all sorts to fill them. If you were born or have shaped yourself so as to fit rectangular tenon in city life | you'll never be wholly comfortable try ing to be a round peg in a country l gimlet-no1e. The country wants those 1 who belong to it-wants them alI more than it is getting. What I am anxious ] to do Is to suggest to you who may happen to have a bad case of spring | feVer' in your blood, just now, that l you'd better be sure it will hold to and l through an arid, parching summer. and | . dreary, sombrc winter. A few excessively "advanced" so- ciologIsts have suggested the wisdom l Of trial maria geS." The world hasn't l taken kindly to the suggestion. and it | isn't likely to be adopted among men 1 ana women. But no one can accuse me of anarchism or immortality if I mildly | suggest that the city man who feels 1 himself suddenly enamored of a coun- | try life and of a home on a little farm | would do well to subject his affection | to a full years test of his charmer be- fore he attaches himself to her for life
 "You don't mean to say that city people have no troubles ?" asks one. Don't we have blue Mondays and de- pressing intervals of dull rain, and | stihing summer heats, and sloppy, slushy, sludgy winters? Haven't we plenty of sorrows, and aren't we also | acquainted with grief?" Bless you, of | course you are; everybody is. The l point I want to make is that your troubles and those of us countrymen | are quite different in character and l call for different constitutions to meet them successfully. So far as I know, sudden death is the only thing we can't get more or less used to and live through But, just short of that, are various discomfortS which bear some what unevenlS on different people. It's | en old saying that one mans meat is anothers poison" The ailneent which sends one maj to bed and makes him a moaning nuisance for d week. another | man straps down under his waistband1 and fights to submission while doing his accustomed work. It's a matter of mental makeup The first man. per | haps, couldn't do what the other ac- aifeTlea 1,,-t i