Norwich bulletin., 1913-10-18
THE BLESSING IN DISGUISE IS SLOW TO
 REVEAL ITSELF

tWritten Specially for The BuIletin)
 A Connecticut editor suggests as a possibility that these frequent droughts and the constant raise in grain prices may eventually prove 2. blessing to Eastern farmers. Tt will force them to return to grain grow ing"
 fancy some of you querying if that will really be a -"blessing?" Let's think it over bit
 A whole Ior of the "bIessings" which we farmers get are what the poet called blessings in disguise. They are often so completely disguised that we take them for disasters when they heave over the horizon. Indeed, d good many of them keep their dis guises on till they have gone by us and passed away into history. They manage to preserve their fncOgnito with wonderful pertinaCity It would take at least two generations and bigh-powered microscope to discover kny trace of blessing" showing |tAFOUGh the cIoaks of some of them.
 There's great deal of loose talk, based upon IOOser thinking, about everything being for the best"
 Whose "beSt2"
 This is a rather sizabIe universe. We have telescopes which show us the light of stars. i e. big blazing suns
  light a thousand years to reach us. And light travels fast enough to go around the earth seven times in second It would take an express train travelling at the rate of a mile minute day and night. week days and Sundays more than 175 years to go from Norwich to the sun. Light makes the trip in eight minutes. let there are suns big and hot as ours, doubt less with planetary systems like ours .1- f11.F r, away than our sun as thousand years IS longer than eight minutes. And even when we have gli1psed them We haven't really looked beyond the threshold of the universe. For the mind IS absolutely incapable of con- ceiving any boundary, however re- mote. which has nothing beyond it.
 Now. ] presume that, in this incon- ceivabiy infinite universe, everything that Is allowed to happen is for the gOOd-of the said universe. But is in wolves q little more self-conceit than ought to be admitted to the ordinary human skull to assume that every thing in the whole shebang is intended for the benefit of John Farmer. Or for the benefit of the whole farming crowd When in the course of me neurological events the storrn-wind descends upon the Atlantic and sends a towering surge crashing up Watch H1I beach, I'll agree with you that the storm and the surge must have have their place in the Great Scheme of Things But l don't believe that they are intended and managed solely for the benefit of any single pebble on the beach Nor that of any bushels of pebbles in any bunch
 The wave does the pounding it was sent to do: the pebbles take the pounding they were laid there to take. But it seems to me that the pebble isn't justified in assuming, as the huge Comber clashes down upon him in shore shaking thunder, that it was sent purely for his good:-that the whole performance was planned staged and carried through for his benefit.
 Yet something quite comparable with that Is what too many of us as- sert when we parrot over the smug assertion that any particular mis- fortune is probably meant for our good
 Meant for undoubtedly. For the good of somebody or something, sometime and somewhere without question But why just for our petty, particular. personal good-yours and mine? We are not the only pebbles on the beach. And there are tl1ous- ands of other beaches in this world and Eillions of other worlds in the universe.
 You'll say, perhaps; There's a difference, MT. Farmer between a pebble and a human being"
 Sartain sure there is. I've been