Norwich bulletin., 1911-02-25
KEEP THINGS HUMMING- HUM SOME YOURSELF

oUmE IUukSELF 5l for him. won't have anything to dq with him. As one of them once said to me: '4t's like g0in' to funeral the corpse"
 Tho other man speak of caB,t pst all the help he really wants; no faTm7 CT can. don't believe Gabriel could. 1 if he should come down and take q l ranch in my nefxhborhood ai1d blow ht6 horn. But he can and does get first pick among the best of the hands" who are annually looking for job. He Is no 'better paya than old Grouchy; work for their money, too. But he never tsIls them what to do; he ghowS them; he never sends them to task: he leads them; he Is always good ma tured, full of qufps and quirks and more or less merry jests. Moreover he's a singer in the choir and loves a good tune for Its own sake. Once, when an especially wet season pre- vented the use of horse tools in low lying meadow of his. he hunted up T as many neighbors. and. at the head of his men-all in rubber boots[ hooked his and their way through the field and saved a lot of very tolerable hay. He had a tall Swede working for
 him who could also sing, and was also
 jolly. We used to call him 'I-bane
 Yonson,' because that was the nearest
 we could get to his name when he tried
 to tell it. MT. Farmer in the lead and
 I-bane" next, both singing "Marching
 Through Georgia" at the top of their
 voices, they dropped that wat grass as
 fast, think, as fair team of horses with a good moving machine could have done. They made a real picnic of
 it and seemed actually a little sorry
 when the work was over So they all
 went back to the house and the boss
 drew 'em a pitcher of cider to moisteH
 their regret.
 # Old Grouohy had told his men to
 grind up some scythes and tackle a
 like task, they would have hung their
 lover the hill to the poorhouse'. be-
 fore they would have sdone it.
 remember ones watching . job in
 the woods. It was a wllacking big
 log which they had down; 1t had
 bound" between two stumps; they had
 orders not to cut it any shortsr-and
 the joint efforts of two horses pulling
 and two men prying with handspikes
 failed to budge it. Along came Pierre. a merry. always singing Canuck. He
 watched them minute; Hi, vere. |
 He picked up a common cordwooS
 stick, took good bite" with it, and
 then began some French chantey. the
 words of which couldn't understand
 but which set even me to beating time
 with my feet With every stress of the
 tune Pierre heaved and the others
 heaved with him and the horses
 strained away, steadily, all the while,
 with their ears back to catch the Inu-H sic. And that old log simply lifted out
 of the bind" as if 1t had had 2 forty
 thousand foot balloon lifting F it. I
 don't believe Pierre did a quarter as
 much real worR as either of the other
 two. He couldn't and keep up such
 volume of song, at the same time.
 I've always thought 1t was the chans
 tey that did 1t.
 Now there are .soms mon who
 couldn't be cheerful if their lives dell
 pended on it. They seem to have been
 born with a pickle in their mouths.
 They're sour all over and all through,
 and all the time. There's no use arr
 guing or exhorting or expostulating
 with such. You can soak the sour
 out of, Q cucumber. but you can't out
 of one of these human pickles If Hannibals army had been made up of
 them, he would have needed no vine-
 gar to thaw his way across the icy
 passes of the Alps. Let. them go;; they're hopeless. But the most of us
 are not that sort. We still have some of the milk of human kindness, un- curdled, in our make up. We can be; fairly jolly part of the time, if we
 l want you to think over; isn't it, aft CT all. really worth while?
 The habit of making work play is not impossible to acquire. 1t Is not so difficult to find comfort in accomplish ment; why not also in the road that
 leads to accomplishment? never knew the farmer yet who didn't feel some degree of pleasure In taking ip
 the money for his crops, Why not
 spread that pleasure out so 1t shah cover the whole process of makins the crops? You can't sell your potax toes till you have grown them. To do this you must blow and harrow and furrow and fertillxa and hoe and fscultivate and dig and bag. All right;
 going to gain from selling the tubers
 and apply a just percentage of 1t to each of those separate jobs of plow+ ing and narrowing and digging, etc. My word for it, you'll find them all the easiers-and, likely. the better done. at the Bank of Enjoyment, and apply
 1t in portions as you go along.
 Supposs you are liable to bs disap- polnteo III tne crOp,. ana mus at the end be defrauded of the full measure of joy you feel a, right to expect? Well, land alive, even If the wind-up is dis- appointment, you'll have had your ad-
 vance share of the fun, anyway, won't you? You can't be compelled to pay
 that back. While it's true that the
 mill won't grind again with the water that Is passed 1t is just sas true that the water which has passed don't have to come back and drive the mill again. This may be bad for the mill, but it's a jolly good release for the water. We farmers have to furnish our own mills and our own water power as well as our own grists. We can afford to look at things from the point of view of the free, racing stream below the mill as well as from the side of the idle wheel. know of nothing which seems to mako a better axle grease for the wheels of daily work than the habit of cheerfulness. It actually helps in mak- ing those wheels "hum' If we. hum q little tune as we wIirl them. Our loads will not seem 50 heavy if we pick up a laugh with each one; our labor not SO hard if we go at it with grin; our pain not quite so sharp if we can change the whfmper into chuc1xls. The world is harsh enough, and the road steep enough and the purdens wearying enough, heaven knows. If we can ease things up even a little by