Norwich bulletin., 1910-05-07

pie for supper. Take it on the whole,
perhaps we do just about as well on
corned beef and cabbage and potatoes
with meat gravy.
The other day had planned to do
a certain bit of planting; had the
ground and seed all ready When l
got UP, it was black and overcast;
later it set in to rain. All day it
drizzled, just enough to keep things
sticky and nasty and prevent working
the dirt. AS 1 Ioafed about, watching
the slow drip of the caves and the
leaden dulness of the lowering sky and
noting impatiently how laggardly the
hours were passing, I began to get low
spirited. Click went my Watch-caSe:
only half-past ten, and it seemed as
if l had been already a week waiting
for the rain to stop and the clouds
to roll away. The world began to get
black and the future blue. So
yanked a single out OF the bunch and
began to tally down what I could re-
member of THE spring weather.
found, at last, that of the thirty
seven week days could recall. i'm
mediately past, we had been able to
work comfortably Oh thirty. Thirty
thirty sevenths of the weather had been
good. Surely that was nothing to get
unhappy about.
Then came the thought: ''Why the
other seven were good too-perhaps
deal better than those we called good.
Look at this rain; the ground was get
ting dry; now it is being irrigated for
me for nothing and the wetting down
my crops are getting Will do them ten
times more good than could do with
all my tools and seeds if / had been
able to get out on that corn patch"
About that time the world began to
look real rosy once more The clouds
kept on dripping, and the wind kept
on signing, and the aves-troughs
kept on gurgling. But 1 appreciated.
all aF Tlat yvh
was for my benefit and that was a
lucky farmer once more. And then.
when I threw the shingle down and
looked at my watch it was dinner
time. 1 felt still better after dinner
/ generally do, don't you?-and took
the afternoon to read up some back
papers. get a nice little nap or two,
in between, and generally idle about as
laziIy as if I had four hundred and
eighty million dollars, and a bark to
keep them in.
Indeed, it often happens that the
very thing we dread and fight against
and complain about turns out, later,
to have been just the best thing that
could have happened. People used to
think that the worse medicine tasted
and srnelled the better it was; the more
good it would do. We've got over that
idea, but We still have to take some
that isn't as nice as candy. We en-
d1Ire the bitter for the sake of the i'm
geon's knife hurts but it hurts to heal,
and the pain is simply an accompani-
ment of blessing. We often fail to
get what we want and we often get
what we don't want Before we set
about denouncdng the universe for
these apparent Inisfits, it might be well
to find out whether that want" of ours
was right or not. The mere fact that
want something doesn't make it the
best thing for me to have. The fact
that I most enphatically don't want
something else doesn't eliminate wholly
the likelihood that it may be the very
best of all possible things for me. 1
don't know all the secrets of the uni
verse; you don't know them; no one
knows them. We don't even know all
the why's and wherefores of ourselves,
mental and spiritual. We see
part of the checker board of life, but
were never wholly sure whether the
game is played according to the rules
of checkers or of chess. Nor do we
games. There are quite few moves
that We aren't up to, yet.
When we do strike it rich and jolly,
why, then's the time to look pleased
and talk happy. When it strikes US
the other way and all the forces of
nature seem to be playing mean tricks
on US, why, thens another time to
look pleased and talk happy. For, con-
all things, the past with the |
present and the general trend Of the
world and of nature, there is an ex-
ceeding strong probability that the |
thing we don't want but are getting
is the very thing we ought to want
and would want, if we knew as much |
about everything as we think we know |
about some things. 1t makes a big |
difference whether you think of the |
world as a great big chaos. a sort of |
in an illirnitable junk shop |
or as an orderly engine, being driven |
to glorious final arrival along abso- |
futely straight tracks There's a ire |
mendous clatter and clutter among the |
parts of a moving locomotive. Some !
are going round and round and some /
are coming back as often as they go |
ahead. Look at these parts alone, and |
the engine would seem to be making a |
Eighty fuss about nothing. But all |
the while the pistons and things are |
fussing and fobbing, the locomotive, |
as a whole, is sweeping tornado like |
towards its terminal And the more
the steam sputters and the harder the |
wheels grind and the liVeIier the |
pistons flop back and forth, the faster /
she's going and the sooner she'll get |
therei THE FARMER.