Norwich bulletin., 1910-10-15

(Written Specially for The Bulletin.)
If there is any one mental asset
more valuable to the average farmer
than another, it is the quality of
cheerfulness. You've all heard of Mark
Lemons famous treatise on How to
Be Happy Though Married" One of
these days L am going to write one
on How to Be jolly, Though a Farm
err"
Sometimes 1 think it would be a deal
easier to write that treatise than to
live it!
OF course, I'm thinE<ing of the COM
mon, everyday, New England farmer
Well count out, for the time being
the city capitalist who comes to the
i've or ten thousand acres and sinks
more capital in getting it ready to
live on than all the real farmers of
the county could get together, were
all their holdings piled in one heap.
Well also count out the self-sufnc
gentlemen who kindly undertake to
show us how to farm it, by creating
sO-cslled model farms on which ten
cent milk is produced at a cost of
fourteen cents. and $3.50 apples at
the fairy tales which come to us from
the boundless west and the exuber-
ant south-tales told usually by people
having land to sell thereof farmers
" Il' are III hluE money manu- over
ist' and doing it without work.
There is little doubt that cheerful
ness comes fairly easy TO these folks.
There's no reason why it shouldn't
Most any Of US can be comfortable
so long as we get the pie and pud-
ding and its somebody else who is
having to wrastle like sin just for a
soupbOne- We are all so built that
ID doesn't tire us much to see the 9TH
ruted that we never feel hungry when
he goes without his dinner. We can
almost invaria oily bear somebody else's
II isfortunes much more stoically than
our own. There's never any difficulty
IN being jolly when everything is
coming our way. II all the agricul-
tural romances that come out of some
other place are true it is no wonder
that the farmers in that other place
alasi it is always some other place
and not the one We know--if, as l say,
these yarns of distant rural prosper
itv are all true. # is no wonder their
heroes and beneAciaries are jolly.
Why, read the other day of some
body IN some Oregon fruit valley who.
seven years ago, planted an orchard
and this season made a trip TO Chicago
with his wife, stopping at the best ho-
tells and travelling on a Pullman, being
gone two weeks-and paying all the
trips expenses from the apples that
grew on I'VE trees. Then l read OF
another in Colorado who paid $4,000
an acre for ten acres Of irrigated
hand and In now clearing $500 an
acre, net profit, from it. There, also,
was the TEXAS widow who had TO
take bold- when her husband died
aud who made SS2, 600 the first year off
Ina yRrSTalsax who was making so
r1uch snouey that he couldn't nnd safe
favesgrnAuts for n all. And the Nor
folk truck gHrdener who had Just
bought an ocoan-go1ng yacht for his
a-nusaED@nt And the New York hen
clear proAt off the fowls kept in a
en-By-norty foot city back yard.
Now, say, Brother Hayseed of
Franklin or North Stonington, is there
any reason on earth why you and I
couldn't be cheerful if we were doing
that sort OF thing? But We are not.
We aren't IN the same class with these
chaps; We aren't even in the same
hemisphere with them We are work
Eng pretty hard. day by day and day
after day, under constant difnculties
and IN the face of frequent unpleasant
emergencies, just to make both ends
meet. We are confronted by 8 stead
fly rising market on all we have to
buy and pretty nearly stagnant mar
ket for what we have to sell We are
having to face daily and next-door
competition of the kind properly called
~cutthroat" We have to work cruelty
long hours. because we cannot get ad-
squate or efficient help. We are mulct-
ID Of practically all our profits in the
high wages demanded even by the
poorest workers. We are, a whole lot
OF US. forever kept lodging between
the devil and the deep sea, and never
quite sure when any day begins
whether one or the other won't get
US before sunset.
When q mans in that shape. it's
something OF a trick for him to be
Jolly. It's not so easy Is rolling off
q log, NOT by long shot Never
theless and Notwithstanding. 1 stick
70 my first statement that the ability
90 keep jolly under such conditions is
as valua Die an asset as the farmer
Insn can have. furthermore, [ be-
bicve it is a state Of mind which can
Be cultivated and kept in tolerable &C
tivity in nine cases out Of ten. Once,
, hundred or so years ago, there were
Two boys in the then Farmer family.
One boy was noted for his ability to
discover lions-'1ions IN the way" you
know. lie could always give even his
ilders points on why it wouldn't do to
undertake any job. The other lad was
,uually noted for his one pet phrase
hntH sci Hl any ldSk ana ASKED II rs
thought he could do it. IN try sir"
The first chap, who seems to have been
PORN discoura Eed, died before ne was
iorty. the III try" youngster lived
lo be ninety-fve and was. at he<rt,
touuEster for at least ninety of those
years.
Now this wasn't merely a eoinc-
ssnce. Laugh and grow fat" is one
Did saying. Laughter is the best aft
p dinner pill" Is another. Whether
rr no you believe in christian sci
f0re.' or in the mind cure" or in
. healing by suggestion or in any
81 her similar ism, matters little: one
fact is certain, and that is that cheer
fitness is an ally of health and a pro-
moter Of longevity. Mighty few peo-
EfJUSf Say"
HO RlECK'SI