Norwich bulletin., 1910-01-22
A FARMERS TALK TO FARMERS
They Boy the Farm and His Bsters Tender Feel ings-Why he Looks for Other Means of Earning a Livne-Too Stern Discipline Repellant to Him-He Sheuld be Dsalt with Considerably and be Taught the Science of Agriculture.

(Writren Specially for The Bulletin-) )
 wonder how many of us twisted, sSnobbx old farmers remember that we,
 too, were once boys? l wonder how
 many of us remember how we used to
 feel about the chores and the onlen- he'd and ng-after-the-cows l won- der how many of us remember how
 we used to hate the daily task Of fill- ing that voracious woodbox and
 bringing in that basket of chips? wonder how many of us recall the
 poignant, darting, scalding pains that used to torture our tender little hands when farm exigencles compelled us 10 take the hoe and "help father 1n the corn or potato field? Father, bless him. didn't appreciate the agony each movement of that hoe handle cost us. His hands were calloused and tough ened by long years of hard labor and, even if he did start a blister. now and then, it caused him no such exquisite suffering as a smaller blister on our more sensitive palms brought us.
 I don't raise many blisters nowadays. My old hands. like those of my father fifty years ago, are getting so tough and hoe and fork and axe handles and are so nearly covered with horny cal louses that there isn't much room left for a real blister. But it chanced last summer working one day with extra vigor and for unusually long hours on a peskiiy weedy garden bed, that l did start a new blister I really didn't notice it till a particularly energetic yank on the hoe handle "broke" it, and I felt the thin serum wetting my hand Then, as I stood for a minute, catching a breath and looking at it, there suddenly came to me a vision in retros pect of that same bit of garden, encountered with a similar growth of weeds on a similarly hot summer day, fifty odd years ago, with my father working along it as I now was, and mn tall a the hoe handle I was struggling with, straining after him in violent endeavor to do my stent," which was to hoe one row while he hoed two. My little palms had blisters at the base of every finger. And oh, how they smarted and stungi I would have given everything l had in the world. and everything hoped for, for liberty to throw away that hoe and dip my hands for the rest of the afternoon in the cool brook, whose rippling tin11le I could hear just Sver the fence in the meadow.
 Now my father wasn't cruel. But he had forgotten how his hands used to feel when he was a little boy. knew there was no use to appeal to him for freedom. He would simply have laughed at me for a ''cry-baby" if had asked to be let off because my hands hurt And I was enough like other boys to dread the Valley of fIinnom less than the being called a "cry-ba1by." But that was the time when I definitely decided that I hated farming: that it was shameful drud- gery and horrible cruelty; that it was the very worst work on earth; and that I was going to run away from it the first chance I got. I even planned my escape for that very night, and was so firm about it that I should undoubt- edly have made the start had I not been so dog-tired when at last I got to bed, so utterly played out, so soaked with sleepiness, that, once in bed, I lNT ing again and fathers voice was call ing, under my bedroom window: Hey Bub, COWS are milked" That meant that l must get after them in short order and drive them to pasture, and simply couldn't run away then till I had had some breakfast. And soon as that was over I was sent to school, and, after school, was allowed to Ego in swimmin' in the pond. So I didn't run away and didn't become a locomo- tive engineer. Just then that was my highest ambition in life. So far as I had observed the duties of this busi- ness consisted in sitting on leather cushioned seat and pulling a stick back and forth. According as you pulled it one way or 'tother you either stopped or went sky-hooting through the world. soaring cows and frightening herses. blowing a whistle when you felt like it and banging a bell when you got tired of the whistle. This seemed to me a highly satisfactory method of getting a living.
 As years went on 1 discovered that being a locomotive engineer involved 6 few other things than pulling a throttle and blowing a whistle and that he couldn't do even these just when and how he wanted to. Also learned that hoe and fork handles weren't any harder than wrench and hammer handles; that it wasn't any hotter in the sunny fields than it was perched over a raging furnace beside a boiler full Of superheated steam-in other words, that running a locomotive wasn't all beer and slxittles'' nor working a farm all slavery and tor snent- The great truth slowly devel- | oped itself in my knowledge that, in | get in some coin or other. and that l you never get something for nothing | l came to appreciate the fact, so sue | cinctiy stated by Fra Ebert, that | those who never do any more than | they get paid for, never get paid for | any more than they do." It was borne | in upon by added years and wider | observation that the only easy way to | negotiate hill is to slide down it. and | that this way Is open only to those | 'who are willing to go down-never to | such as want to get up-
 But the boy doesn't understand this | There is no reason why he should. It | Is a hard lesson, taught only by School | master Experience. He hasn't got far In the three-s score and ten years course | of that pedagogue-is only a, beginner