Norwich bulletin., 1914-05-02
THE FARMERS NEED AND WHY HE DOESN'T
MEET TT

(written Specially for The Bulletin.) The amount of advice we residents of the "roorai deestriks'' get in the course of a year is something enorm- ous. Most of it Is well-meant and some of ft-some little of it-has a ruut1 ef good sense in it, after the sap has been boiled away.
 Most of it, however, comes from self important men and women who don't know the difference between a farm and a country estate" And it is worth about as much to the real farmer as the said farmers advice would be to Colonel Goethals concern ing the lock machinery on the Panama canal.
 James Russell Lowell once wrote a keenly satirical essay "On a Certain condescensfon of Foreigners. The gist of 1t was that nearly all foreign visitors who came to this country promptly put on an air of fatherly con- descension towards everything Amer ican, much as one might towards the small devices of his own children in their nursery.
 foreign visitors is nothing compared with that frequently shown by city folks toward their country cousins.
 They are often quite complimentary over our cunning little ways of doing things, and take pains to make it clear that considering our limitations, they think we are really doing quite well. Of course they allow us to see that they themselves are used to something much better, and they generally end up their partial approval by intimat- ing, more or less plainly, how much better they would manage matters if I@ ( T-1 A. live in the country.
 When they get well enough &C., quainted so as to feel quite free, they almost invariably change from a tone of polite compliment to one of ex- ently things are done in the city, and how much better off we'd be. if we humbly copied city or at least sub urban ways. For instance, don't we think the front yard would look bet ter if the fence were taken away and the old stone flags that grandfather laid removed to make room for grav- eled walks, and the fashioned lilacs torn up to give place to Fly drangea Grand i forum" and some exotics from Japan or South America substituted for the sweet-scented roses that mother loved so much
 Especially, wouldn't it be great inn provement if we all painted our barns colonial yellow" and put in electric wiring and laid cement walks every where?
 Most especially of all, why don't we have bathrooms with running water?
 Of late, 1t seems to me, there's a special drive being made at the bath room proposition. "Who needs c bathroom more than a farner?" asks
 
 murmurs another, your home would be perfectly lovely No trouble at all to have one" masterfulIy asserts a third; "all you've got to do is to pipe water from some spring on the hills put a tank in the attic-and there you are.''
 'Um-hum, er'r-'r, ya-as, of course pervfous to frost.
 Just as . matter of siIlyy rural con. servatisni, though, let's think it over a else needs" a bathroom more than the farmer; I certainly doubt if any, one wants one more. But before we put one in;
 It costs money to pipe thit spring down to the house. In the first place the spring must be dug out and some sort of reservoir cemented up to hold water enough for emergencies in drought time. Then you must get gal vanized pipe, for exprience has showr you that the common black pipe rusts full or rusts into holes in a mighty short time. and galvanized pipe costs more money. The ditch for the pipe must be blasted most of the way through rocks, and deep enough to bs safe from freezing. If you think thai won't cost much, get an estimate, ana see how 1t makes you feel! Of course every farmer has the loose money tha all this will require bulging out of hi. overalls pocket If he hasn't, why. ht can mortgage the farm, can't he?
 But then, that "tank in the at tic." Certainly water kept in a tanl in the attic will run down to a bath room on the next floor, when wanted It will also run down into the parIo] and the bedrooms and the dining room and into the flour barrel when it dis tinctly is not wanted, but has to. be- cause the tank has frozen and burst This particular farmer lives in al old farmhouse in the hills where tn, winters attend strictly to business where the ground freezes from three t, four feet deep; where ice fifteen inche. thick is a usual winter covering or ponds; and where even the brooks run for weeks at time under mile-lons ice-br1dges strong enough to hold up : horse His attic would be just abou as appropriate a place for a water tank in winter as the kitchen stoy for a repository of blasting powder. don't know which would be likely f, do the more damage
 ln the case of the average farm house 1t would be cheaper, in the end to burn it down and build a new one than to put in the tanks and plumbin, and steam -heating necessary fl