Norwich bulletin., 1910-05-21

very much in life.
 A slim legged, high spirited, pure bred racehorse could, doubtless. be used to blow with. And old Dobbin could be put on the race track. But l it would be misfit in both cases. l Old Dobbin is worth three prize-win-
 ming three year olds at the blow. But | he couldn't get third money from them on the track. One man, if an l inch of snow falls on the sidewalks,
 wants it shoveled and swept off at once to make the streets passable. Another man laughs when a foot of snow surrounds his farmstead build ings-pulls on his lumberman's boots and wades through it without a
 thought of shovel and broom. If you're used to the street cleaning
 brigade and all the things that go with it, you want to think twice be- fore you go to live a hundred miles beyond their beat
 To all of use there come times
 when the other fellow seems better off than we are; and some other place seems blesseder than the one we are condemned to. The ambitious country boy is always in this state of mind; he's sure that the city is a hap
 pier hunting ground than the dull old farm. Sometimes and in some cases he will find it so Others make the mis- take of their lives in attempting the transfer. Of late the tendency, espe- cially among older people, is rather the other way They want to escape the city's cares and frets for what seems to them the happier outlook of the country life Sometimes and in some cases they find the change for tunate escape. Others learn, too late, that it hasn't reduced the temperature to. jump from the frying pan into the fire.
 ] have some mighty unhappy coun- try neghbors. Part of them were born where they now live, and never found out that the city was the place they should have gone to. Unlucl1y beings, they were really born in eXile-in an environment foreign to their central souls. Others have come back to the land" under the impulse of a tempora- ry mental Arrangement, and now they're wondering what on earth to do with the rest of their lives. I'm sor- ry for both these classes-just as sor- ry as am for the born farmers whom chance has doomed to the imprison- ment in fenced cities and walled-in streets. It's too bad some kind fairy cannot arrange our births, so that the countryman shall always be born on the farm and the city man in town. Since that prenatal favor hasn't been shown us, however, and since we must depend upon our own election to de- eide our habitations, it behooveS us very carefully to consider both sides of the proposition before we make final decision.
 I have three friends who typify three different ideals, along this line. One frankly admits that he ''hafeS' the country and country ways. His business is in the city. his home is there, he is prosperous there, content ed and fairly comfortable. He will stay there-and he ought to; it's where 'This is my idea of real comfort to live. as we do, in a small village. I don't want to be shut up in city, and I couldn't earn my salt on a farm. Here think I get all the real advant- ages of both with few of their evils" Again, this is the case of the garment fitting the career. A third, who was born and brought up in New York city, 1 but has now lived twenty or more years in the country, says: T couldn't get for any money in New York city one-half the solid satisfaction which I have here. know, for I have tried it!"
 There you have the situation. If you are of the mind of this last man, 1 and are sure of yourself. don't let any back to your real home. Come where | you belong. Buy a farm, lease one, l rent one-anyway to get one. And then you'll learn, at last, what it is to | fit. But don't beg of you, take some transient spring fever for anything 1 chronic. Don't imagine that new sur will bring you happiness, l unless you bring the happiness with | you to them. Make sure that you can enjoy the gray days as well as the l sunny ones, the splendid desOlation of | a wintry landscape as much as the i lush greenery of vivid May, the feel of the soil under your coarse working | boots as truly as that of the graveled l roadway under your automobile l wheels.
 In other words, look before you leap. | Make sure that you can fetch the oth- | CT bank. Make sure that the other | bank is where you really want to be. | Make sure that it is where you be- | long. Make sure that there are no l strings tied to you to bring you up | short in mid-Ieap, and drop you, ker- funk, into the middle of the brook
 Then, when you've make sure of all | this. take a run and jump for all you're | worthi
 THE FARMER.
 He Thinks It So Absurd.