Norwich bulletin., 1911-06-03

NNpitten Specially for The Builetin.)
 'If it isn't one thing, it's another.'' That phrase is a sort of farmers shib- boleth. If you don't hear 1t said, soon CT or later, by the man on the farm, you may set it down as probable that he's not a real farmer. but just a sort of stop-gap.
 [ suppose in the Garden of Eden it was never either one thing or another. but just the same glorious state of all- rightness all the time. But there's s been. a noticeable change in gardens and Nsich since then.
 Last spring, for instance, along about this time. we in this particular neck of the woods were being drench- 1d and drowned out by persistent cold rains They put back spring work, delayed all sorts of crops, even rot ted seed in the ground The intervals of sunlight and warmth were so inter- mittent and infrequent that the soil didn't get really dried into fitness for plant nourishment for several weeks. This spring, on the contrary, we in this same neighborhood are in imni- nent danger of drying up and being blown away We haven't had rain enough for six weeks to wash the dust thoroughly off the sadly wilted leaves of the discouraged spinach and lettuce. With the drought we're being overrun by some new breed of bugs or fungus some thing which, like the pestilence of the Bible, stalketh by night and fin- ishes mp then about all the growth which has managed to start the previ- ous day None of us has yet been able to find the thing itssH, whatever it is, and we and our young plants are rath- CT helpless before an enemy we haven t vet been able to trace to it's ambus- ceda. We shall undoubtedly get on to it," sooner or later. Then we'll hunt up some new kind of poison and begin a new battle.
 The bug men are forecasting another invasion of fhe seventeen year locusts this season. and are telling us what to do. 1 don't worry half Ss much a bout the seVenteen-year locusts as I do about the seventeen -times-a-y year po- tsto bugs I've lived through three of those locust invasions and shouldn t ever have known l was being invaded but for the bulletins in the papers. But We all know it when the potato bugs arrive. and the tent-caterpillars. and the codling moths. and the cucumber beetles, and the squash bugs. and the cCt-Worms, and the flea beetles, and the wire worms and the rose slugs, and the various other critters that choose us farmers for their special
 
 us. on some particular season. but If it isn't one thing. it's another" If one gives us the go-by for a year, an- other spits on its hands, figuratively speaking, and takes a fresh hold.
 But, say. brother farmer. do you really suppose that you and I are getting any more than our fair share of trouble? We're getting more than we want. nobody need dispute that. But are we getting more than the av- erage' More than other workers in other callings get? l don't think so. Of course. each one of us knows his own troubles best and most thorough iy. They burden our shoulders much more than other folks troubles. It's an admitted fact in philosophy that a boil on the end of my nose hurts me more than a carbuncle on Neighbor Jones proboscis. Artemas Ward. you remember. said he didn't care to en- list and go to war and be shot for