Norwich bulletin., 1910-01-01

hood quiltln's when your mothers was gals. Yes, indeed, those were tho times. Work in the woods all day.with the snow up to your waists, then hitch up the old wood-shQd sled and take a passel of young folks cross the noun tain to Grandfather Pollard's. dance the Virginia Reel and Money Musk till midnight-and then get up at o'clock next mornin' and milk seven cows that's the way we used to do things. Um-um-unl, and so forth, ct cetera.
 1 wonder how many of us appreciate the fact that we're simply making laughing stocks of ourselves when we talk this way and are not fooling tho kids a little bit? Probably some things did really grow bigger when the coun- try was new than they do noW--pine trees and mosquitoes, for instance Very likely the winters did seem long CT. It is a characteristic of human na- ture that Time Is a veritable snail to the youngster in his teens Who'se long ing for "one- and twenty" while he t1 a Jumping jackrabbit for speed when the life-glass has turned past fifty. But there's no evidence, beyond our own tricky imaginatious, that the cli- mate has much modified or the race much degenerated in the last half cen tury. The early annals of New Eng land tell of occasional great snows," but nothing indicates that any of them were any worse than that same blizzard of SS, which was only twenty one years
 
 hired help" last summer used to staw up O nights till early morning about three days every week, at dances or with his best girl, and put in a good ten hours work, next day, blowing or haul ing manure or weeding onions, whist ling like bird all the time, from Gheer eXuberance of animal spirits and abund- ance of physical strength. The change hasn't been in the world about us, but in our old eyes and backs and legs. We're not so young as we used to be. but the world-the big bright bouncing young world-that's not old. It is yet but a very infant of a world. soaked and saturated with the juices of youth, effervescing with the bubbling ecstacy of babyhood. Because our old bones ache is no reason for supposing that the planet has rheumatism. Because we must use spectacles to read the pa per is no reason for asserting that tho sunlight isn't as bright as it used to be. Because wed rather sit by the | lamp, 70 nights, and read somebody 8 | latest System Of Progressive Poultry l Keeping is no reason for doubling | but that the moonlight on the pine-y | knolls is just as trancing to Jack and | Gill as it ever was to Jacks grandfath- CT and GilPs grandmother.
 If there IS any occupation on earth 1 in which men ought to keep at least | the spirit of youth fresh in their bOs- oms, it is that which we farmers fol- | low. Who worries over the sunset | Night and dark are only preparation ! for the bursting dawn of newer and better day. What if it is winter half the year? Under the snoWs which blanket the soil the Great A1chemist is l preparing a fresh wonder of spring | from whose bIosHomings shall ripen a l harvest bounty limited only by our ca 1 pacity to make use of it. Our whole | business is out in the open fields, un- l der the full skies and glowing suns | which are forever renewing and re- | oenaraf in er .VOunp life Why fhfq VerV day, as the snow is drifting around my i yet unsawed woodpile and the chill 1 wind is whistling under the white-hunG caves, am all the time thinking where I shall put my peppers SO they will get | the full benefit of next Julys ferveni 1 heat. and where I can sow late lettuce l so it will not burn up or spindle ir | the same roasting which the peppers
 are going to enjoy.
 Of course it's cold, just now Ant
 I've got chilblains on my toes whicl
 are beastIy sore. But I put on an ul
 ster and a fur cap and fleece lined init
 tens to do my chores and the cold car
 stay outside when I get them all on l The chiIblain'S are not winters fault
 but just my own. If ] had changed m! leather footgear for comfortable felt
 a week sooner than did, they wouldn' ] have appeared The only reasonable thing for me to do is to kick myself, l. | must kick at all.--Which leads me (, simply tortured by the wretched blain.
 when I was a boy, every winter, be cause in those days the benefactor whC
 invented felt boots hadn't got in hi
 work, and had to wear leather There,
 in is one respect certainly, by which [ I can be a mighty sight better off thar ! used to be-if I'll only use my com
 mon sense in time and in sufficient | THE FARMER.