Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1914-07-16
GROWERS ARE HAPPY
HOW THE sRITIsHER GETS HIS
GREATEST SATISFACTION.
Writer Probes Mysteries Of Numer
GUS compIaInts-safety Valves for
DissruntIed Found in Newspa-
pers, Public Officials, Etc.

Just as the proverbial old lady was
never happy unless she was miserable,
so the average Britisher extracts his
greatest satisfaction from a downright
honest growl, says a writer in London
Answers.
No one can justifably call us a ma
ton of grumblers, and yet on every
hand we hear complaints, loud and
penetrating. 1t is our right and pre-
rogative to growl, and growl we do,
as a kind of habit.
The baby growls because its clothes
are too tight or its bottle not up to
schedule time in its appearance. The
child growls because bedtime arrives
too soon. Schoolboys and school
girls are inseparable from growls, and
the adult wades cheerily through a
perfect sea of them. Old age, again,
is only too frequently typitied from be-
ginning to end as one reverberating
grumble.
In the curious psychology of the hui
man ace there is not to equal the joy
of a growl we'll aired. You feel ter
ribly angry because the sos train
from the city to your home has run
late for nearly a week, and you write
a singing, virulent, scorching, crush
ing letter to the manager of the par
ticular railway company e~ntangled in
your wrath. All the time you know
full we'll that the manager keeps a
kind of tame, ~shellbacked, armor plat
ed assistant who will ~contentedly post
you a cold acknowledgement and drop
your complaint into the waste paper
basket. You understand all this quite
clearly, and yet you are satisfied, for
the writing of that vitriolic letter has
put you right with yourself.
Growls are just safety valves for
over-wrought feelings. Picture the
old lady who writes a frantic letter
to the local newspaper anent the pau
city of policemen in her quaint SUI
burban backwater. Seeing her fam
ing words in the majesty of print, she
marshals each paragraph as an imag-
mary constable guarding her life and
property. Her efforts have brought
her both joy and security, but were
she to analyze the matter she would
realize that she has merely f1atterec
herself into the belief that her mighty
missive has set in motion the police
of the county, while, as a matter o.
fact, no one takes any notice.
OF all the vast army of GROWERS
the farmer is surely the worst of
fender. He complains if the sun il
not shining in one field, rain falling
! in another, and gentle, drying breeze'
; are not blowing in a third-all sim
: ultaneous. And after the farmer, com
! mend me to the amateur gardener.
Public officials, were they not thick
skinned, would all be made subject
for the lunacy commissioners by tn
frequency with which growls. raj
upon them. Editors of all classes q
papers come in for many grumbler'
! and the reverend gentlemen who ac
as u spiritual advisers get NOR
than their share Of circulating cor
plant,
Everybody, from the belated erran
boy with the groceries to the mos
voluble politician, earns %opprobriul
from someone, and the people VIII
growl most are usually those who ar
happiest, for their pent-up feeling
have full play and outlet. ~