Norwich bulletin., 1911-01-21
ovER-AMBITIoUs YOUNGSTERS AGE

OVER-AMBlTIOUS YOUNGS (Written Specially for The BuI1etin.) Last week tried to talk 8 little sense into the over- anbfqtious young ing on the old farm within q single season. Really. I don't suppose T s1c- ceeded very we'll Wiser men than ! have tried to admonish headstreng youth before this, and have usually failed. It's very much like attempt ing to argue with the locomotive of the Cannon-fbalI express, or expostu- lating with the incoming Atlantic tide. Still, a fellow feels better satisfied with himself if he has tried to do his duty, even though he hasn't succeed ed,-and didn't expect to succeed Today ! want to try my pIow in . moro promising field, as we old codgersS will all admit it to be. l want to make a suggestion to my Beens." We old 'uns ought to be aInena ble to reason and able to see through role in the fence. We may be and very likely are a good deal worked up about the cratic and airn- less way in which a lot of young fef- lows are carousing over the fields which we have studied so long and learned to love so well. But, after all, we want to help them. If we can't help them in our way, why not help them in their own way? It's very attractive to many of us to be able to say, right out loud: 'I told you so." But if we conquer that desire and keep back the wohds, it isn't un- likely that the time will come, even if we aren't here when it comes, when those same youngsters will say the words for us, with a little catch in the throat, perhaps, and a little quiver in the voice: Well. Dad told me so" suppose almost every young farm CT who has any gimp in him begins what anJbitiously. We old fellows, on the other hand, are apt to be so 'foguey,'-I don't know how to spell that word, but you know what mean, so slow and so timid and so used to things as they are and so dfspirited and so chronieally tired that we fair iy dread the thought of anything new. We're "agfn it," no matter what 1t is, if only it is something new and dif- ferent. The perfectly natural result is that the young fellows get the idea that we're just old slow-coaches, who had rather stick in the mud than tootle along on the trolley. They come to look on us as plaguey old bothers.-as instructions in their way, --as brakes on their wheels, and they going uphill at that.
 Now the chances are that we're righs two times out of three and that they are right only one time in three. It is more than likely that any single proposition they take up is a mistake. But,-what of it?
 We used to be young, ourselves, and didn't we make mistages? Why. there isn't a farmer of sixty in all Connecticut with a decent memory and a fair share of honesty, who could tell all his mistakes in a three the local store. Moreover, when he'd told all he could remember some old neighbor would undoubtedly be able to refresh his memory with a dozen or two more blunders so absurd that he'd blush to recall them. Why, the other night I wakened from my sleep ting ling all over with the prickings of self shame, because a vague dream had recalled to mo something I did more than twenty years ago,-sone- thing so idiottc.-such a concentrated, bsoiled- down, double distilled essence of underheadedness,- ,-tlftat I had to get up and stick iny unworthy head into a bowl of cold water before felt willing to sleep with, myself again. ! The same thing has happened to you, | old fellow -sexagenarian, don't pretend I that it hasn't.
 Really, | suspect, if the truth were l told, we've all Of us actually learned ! more by our own mistakes than by ! any other way. We've found out by ! them what not to do. In our calling I we are so fenced in and staked down | and halter tied and imprisoned within l the eternal Thou Shalt Nots'' of nat I ural law that the knowledge of what we can't do is often more practically l important than the knowledge of what ] we perhaps may do. Said the success ] fu1 editor of great daily newspaper, 1 once when some simple friend was
 ! wondering to him how he ever found l enough news to fill his paper: HI, 1 that's easy enough: my trouble is to know what to leave out!" We old
 | farmers have, by our very mistakes, | learned a whole lot of things Not To
 Do.
 | But why should we expect the young fellows to have biisters on their hands
 because we burned our fingers? That
 | isn't the way things work. That isn't
 l the way young blood acts. It didn't | in our cases when we were young and
 sassy: it isn't fair that we should ex-
 pect it to in the cases of our suc-
 cessors. The things we value most
 are the things we've earned, not those
 \ given to us. The Knowledge we tie up
 to is that which we have acquired for
 ourselves through experience and test,
 ! not that which we have read in books.
 have sort Of kind of a general
 Pidea that it's about s3.eO0,00o miles to I the sun. I've never been there to see.
 I've read in books, and am inclined 10 | think it's probably about 50. But l
 KNOW that it's just f1alf-a-rail
 length,-six feet,-from my swamp
 | fence to the edge Of that four-feet
 deep mud-hoIe. I know it, because I
 | once thought it was more on a dark
 night and went into the mud to my
 i arTn-pits. The subsequent experience
 | was not pleasant but it was informa .
 | tive and educational. I shall not make
 l that mistake again.
 There you have # in parable. You
 I and I have been spilled into a good l many mud -holes,-actua1 and figura :
 tive,-iD the course of our lives The
 I young fellows, even if they were as
 | wise as we, must be expected to get
 | into some, also. It's all right to tell
 l them what holes we've found, but, If