Norwich bulletin., 1910-08-13
Rufus HoIIander. the Pesky Nuisance.

 , He doesn't go much on rules of log I ic. I doubt if he ever heard of a syl- Iogism or could see the force of one if he were to meet it. His compass and guiding star is .'common sense.' D Unfortunately for the rest of us, he
 never finds any hat except his own surrounding. that quality. When they laid out the new railroad, the engineers made a. long detour through our val
 ley instead of following a straight line along the base of the hills. Rufus
 promptly decided that this was case
 of graft and holds to that opinion today. The extra mile of track and
 the extra payments for right of way
 were, to his mind, just money stolen from the stockholders. The engineers
 explained that their line had to reach a certain altitude, some miles north of us and that the longer route with low
 CT gradients and less cuttings" was actually cheaper to build than the shorter line with numerous excava- tions and a high grade. Moreover, it would forever be a daily saving in the operation of the road to haul it's trains up an easy rather than a steep grade. road manager; he is like myself, a cabbage and potato raiser But the engineers reasoning slid off him like water off a ducks back. He knew better And that settled it. He never buys a ten cent ticket even now, with 
 ed on the fact that the ticket could have been sold for nine and three quarter cents, if the road wasn't pay ing interest on the needless cost of an extra mile of track.
 Rufus is not an astronomer. He sees the Pole Star stand still in the north ern heavens and the Dipper swing around it. When I incautiously at tempted to explain to him, once, that he around Polaris, like a stone at the end of string in a boys whirHng hand. he simply sneered at my credulity Couldn't he see it move from hour 10 Couldn't I use my "commoa sense?' What was the use of talking such stuff to him? laboriously explained how the revolution of the earth, on an axis pointing at Polaris, made the oth- CT stars each side of it seem to revOlve, while really it was not they but our tot of an earth which was rolling over. I attempted to give him some idea of the incalculable and unimaginable dis tanceSa of those stars. The earth IS flying through space at the rate of nineteen miles a second: isn't that going sone2 But if those Dipper stars had to swing completely around the Pole star every twenty-four hours, they'd have to go farther in second than our earth goes in a million years" Don't care nothin' about how fast they'd have to go, said Rufus; guess Gods able to make 'em go. as fast as He wants 'em to-" And that ended it, right there. You see, Rufus feels him than I have ever been able to convince myself that I am.
 Rufus is generally in trouble with most of his neighbors and always in trouble with some of them. I think he would Feel that day lost whose low descend
 ing sun
 Saw no new rows or rumpuses begun"
 He feels it his duty to oversee my gardening operations: I don't now re- call that I ever did anything just right about them, in his eyes. He also feels for Neighbor Warehouses pens: last time met him, he set forth several volumes of criticism on those hapless buildings and their wretched inhabitants. Neighbor Sheri- school in the buggy. Tt would be a mighty sight cheaper fer 'em if they had to walk" says Rufus. He also takes charge of our politics; tells us when to vote "reg' g'lar' and when to 'insurge"; and hates us forever after | if we don't follow his lead. He always begins having the first weekday after the Fourth of July, and so must every farmer in ten miles if we want to keep l our names on his good books. He looks l after our clothing; because he prefers 1 plain blue-and-w white striped overalls | of denim it follows that one who wears l 0veralls of blue drill with a bib on 'em 1 is either Weak-headed or wrong heart l ad- And so it goes through all the | nultiform details of life. The other l eleven jurors are all always stubborn | pr ignorant or corrupt: but Rufus is | always right.
 Dear brother or sister, as the case | nay be; suspect that we've all got a | title touch of Rufus in us. Some a | pit more: some a bit less. Was it | David Harum who said that, when it | ,ame to money. "a little too much was l lust about enough ?' But this Rufe- | anism is not like that: even little | S too much. Am my brothers keep | sr2'' asked Cain. No, he wasn't. The | whole trouble was that he had tried | o be and then attempted to lie to the | Lord by asking an honest question dis honestly. It was just his mixing up | n Abels affairs with a club that | aused all the disturbance and dowef- d posterity with a train of murder rials and criminal lawyers and insani- y experts and some score of other wills. If he had stuck to his garden md had done the best he could with t. and had let Abel alone to tend his heep in his own way, he might have 'een better off: Abel certainly would lave been.
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