Norwich bulletin., 1912-08-03

(Written Specla1ly AoI 1HO
 After all has been said about thehigh cost of living;-of the cost or hlgn living, whichever way you want to put it.-the fact remains that 1t does not now, never did, and never will hurt us farmers half as much as our own heedleSSneSs.
 HsedIessness; that's one word for it Shiftlessness is another Whlch comes to about the same thing snort gightedness is another. lmproVloence is still another. as
 And there are scores of phrases, slangy and rude, to express the lded. Hand -to-mouth," they say Ill soIhe parts of New England. Happy-go- lucky" is used elsewhere. 60 oay, come day; God send Sunday lNe heard in the Canadian provinces On newer mind now: it'll be all the same a hundred years hence;" haven't we all heard that, over and over agaln!
 Where there are so many nearly sy- anonymous words and phrases to con vey' a. single idea, it is reasonaDly certain that the idea is rather gen eral and widespread one. It IS not the habit of the language to com words in profusion unless the thins they stand for IS common.
 Now. don't want to be understood As saving or even limiting that thls vice Is peculiar to farmers. l shouldn [ say. judging from the experience or some sixty years, that shoemakers ana blacksmiths and house-painters nad the aflmant as bad as any human oe- Ings could have it and not stagnate 10 death. But the old hymn truthfully remarked that Other mems failures will never save YOU" It wouldn't t mean greater prosperity for us' II everybody else in the world should pc cured while we remained infected Sending another man to the dehtlst will never stop my toothache-
 lt certainly is apparent to any un- biased observer that we farmers nave the disease much too generally Not all of us, thank heaven! But too many of US. .,
 Probably there is some extenuation for it, in a good many cases we farmers, more than any other order of worKmen, are exposed to contln- gencies and happen chances which nc degree of foresight can reasonably De expected to predict and no reasonable exercise of precaution can forestall We can't know, in April, that there are to be crop-killing frosts in June and pitiless droughts in July and August. Even if we did know before hand that they were coming, we can't roof over our farms with glass to protect against the frost, nor irrf- gate them adequately against the drought. It would cost more than al our possible crops, with fences ano farms thrown in, would be worth. St we have to take our chances against these and other unacceptable accidents It isn't wholly unnatural that we should come to feel, at times, as it wt were really such helpless pawns II the big game that it didn't matter much whether we moved or stood still
 Such a feeling, however natural, is nevertheless, not to be commended ol excused. The mishaps we are ex posed to do not justify our mistakes When we are playing the game agains such yelled mystery as that which WI call Nature, we know, at the start of that she is likely to surprise us witt unexpected moves. When we pick Ill our hoes and get out our blows to be gin the annual set-tO with her, VI know perfectly well that she is likel, to have something up her sleeve, Sh may not, it is true; but then agah she may. And we have got to wal till we find out before we know. Tax ing chances is part of our business We can't avoid them if we wanted to we don't expect to avoid them, if W have any sense.
 But losing chances is NOT a par of our business.
 We have legs to get around with hands to work with brains to pla with; and will to stiffen our backs an keep US up to the firing line, whe we have once taken our stations there on. It is true that great man clans manage to make a living of lying still in the mud and doing noth ing but keep their mouths open flo what Providence and the tides ma