Norwich bulletin., 1913-05-31

the most absorbing interest, and in which we can excel.
 Then DO IT. And STICK TO TT.
 l can very we'll imagine that the man who tries to raise a little corn and a few potatoes and some oats and bit of hay and patch of buckWheat on a hilly Connecticut farm; who mas a small orchard and keeps few hens and harbors a flock of runty sheep and milks three or four cows and tends couple of pigs: who tries to raise a little of everything his neighbors do, and doesn't turn out a single crop above the aVerage,-l can imagine that such a farmer may find the sleddlng mighty hard I can also imagine that the same farmer on the same farm, might grow independently rich breed ing draft horses for a market which never has enough or selling fancy fowls to opu1ent chicken fanciers, or raising six -tonS-tO- -the-aCre timothy hay for livery men and other million aires who can afford to buy tiff only he has the bent and the ability to excel along any of these lines.
 1t is perfectly true that exceptional success comes only to exceptional men. The point 1 want to make is that most of us are in some degree eX- ceptional men: that farming offers an opportunity unique among kindred callings for humoring our indiViduali- ties: that almost any one of us can do some one thing better than the aV- craze: and that there is very very wide margin of chance for each one of us to win an exceptional success if only we will work along the line of our exceptional capacity.
 They call farmers "a crotchetty set". Heaven bless us! We aren't half "crotchetty" enough, We are alto gether too much inclined to drive our business along the ruts the crowd has made. We are, most of us, doing as the rest do,-not as our own abilities would suggest if we would test them out, each for himself We raise oats because the other farmers of the town raise oats. Or we try to grow pota- toes the way Smith does, because Smith seems to have unusually good. luck with the tubers. Yet the chances are nine out of ten for any particular one of us that he'd bet ter leave both oats and potatoes alone and go in for some other thing which he's naturally fitted for, as that same Smith is for potato growing and as the town bunch are not for grow ing.
 if every other farmer in town was built exactly like you in mind and body, then you'd all be wise to do the same thing in the same way But there aren't any two of you alike, and you all know it. The great joke of ancient mythology was when Her cules who was especially constructed to kill lions and dragons and hydras and the like, fell in love with Omphale and tried to thread her needles for her. It isn't so much of a joke as it is a tragedy when the farmer who was made to grow berries-and who could grow grand ones worth big money if he'd only stick to them,-when he tries to make a. living running a milk route. Or vice versa, when the born dairyman who understands cows and can do anything with them, tries to manage a potato or a tobacco farm.
 In the old comic opera it was as- serted that the true function of pen ology was ito make the punishment fit the crime"
 The highest successes in agriculture can be achieved only by making the farming fit the farmer.
 And, since there are so many kinds of farming this isn't so hopeless a task. after all. THE FARMER