Norwich bulletin., 1910-02-26

town force was pussy on other roads which were worse drifted, and not one I of the nine able bodied men who lived handy and used the road every day 1 would do twenty minutes work with a shovel in unpaid highway opening. They would rather suffer daily incon- venience themselves than do a Mttle for their own comfort-wnich might also help others, because it wasn't on their land and was legally the road commissioners business.
 Now, never mind the adjectives which l might properly be used to describe the moral and ethical spirit of those men; 1 just stop and think what folly they ] showed. Contrast their action and it's result with what would be the result if | not only, they but all others in similar l conditions would jump over their own -barnyard fences occasionally to help
 out. These men not5only drove around l their own little drift whenever they 1 came to 1t and made everybody else do | the same, but they also had to drive around other drifts which were piled l adjacent to other houses, which other i householders had left undug. In my eight mile trip that day had to scratch over plOwed ground or drive
 over road bank stone heaps or strug- 1 gle through hedgerows of brush three 1 times because small drifts barred the straight road. Whose fellows who left ,, their drifts untouched had to do the same. Yet, if they had each, when the storm cleared and the drifts showed, done about twenty minutes work for the public service, they would have saved themselves all this trouble-and saved even more to other innocent passers from distance. The cost of repairing one pair O. bobs'' which had smashed under the strain of taking a load over one stone heap on the road side bank at the end of a drift would have more than paid for making good road through all the drifts I met that day.
 "Why should I do it? There won't nobody else do nothin' of the sort" Well, suppose there won't; how does that let me out? Must I work with a hole in my boot because my next door neighbor is too mean to pay for a tap on his? Am I in any way required to do mean things because some one else does them? Does it excuse me even one little bit when act like s. fool to point out that Jones and Johnson also act like fools? Perhaps they may not know their own folly; this is always a possibility, if not very probable. But I do know it, and what sort of excuse is 1t for my own wrong or folly to plead that I'm no worse than they2 The very fact that l appreciate at its true val uation and understand the real charac- ter of my weak or wicked neighbours action is the most peremptory mandate that God and nature can issue forbid ding me to initiate it. Dear friend, it is better to be lonely and to be laugh ed at, better to be sneered at as an impractical theorist,' better to be con- than to anputate your own neighborli- 1 ness and public spirit because your unfortunate critics don't possess any.
 Three miles away from me are two farmers who, some years ago, bought ! their grass seed of the same adulterat- 1 ing dealer. In the resultant crop ap- peared on both farms a lot of "bIue l devir'-a destructive and diabolical | weed. One of these farm CTS, as soon as he discovered the pest, summoned help and went over the whole field dig ging out and destroying every plant i before it could seed down. Right over l the line fence the other farmers lot is i now hairy with the stuff, and he won't touch it. He happens to have land | enough so he won't miss it if a single field is ruined. He is also getting on in years and is too mean to care for | posterity. He is lazy, as we'll And so from this field the birds and the winds l are carrying seeds in all directions and | other farmers are to be made needless expense or to lose valuable land be- | cause this one is too selfish to do a | little work in behalf of public safety.
 Of course, these are only iIIustra tions, trivial ones if you please, of a | spirit which works in other and more important matters. Nobody defends it l openly; why should anybody practice | 1ty Wouldn't this be 8 mighty sight | better world all around, not only for l the other fellow, but for us, too. if we would all act out the famous four rules 1 of Edward Everett Hale:
 Look up, and not downl
 Look out, and not in;
 Look forward. and not back; and
 LEND A EANDi"
 "Oh. yes you say, 'very fine: if all would do it; but they won't and why should we?" Why? Because we want to be better men than those we de- spise; because the things we see to be unworthy in them are unpardonable in us who appreciate the wrong; be- cause we are not silly sheep who just follow their leader, but men with minds and souls of our own, able to see the right and follow it, though we live and die alone in that seldom travelled track. That's whyi
 THE FARMER.