Norwich bulletin., 1916-12-30
SATISFACTION NOT LIFE's END AND AIM

I ed in any moral at all as I am in the { intimation plainly conveyed by the | tale of practically universal human belief in one sociological fact, to. wit, namely, that is to say:
 The fact that the open and frank erection of selfish personal happiness
 as the object of life logically results in 1 a lazy and shirtless beggar, drowsing clam-like at the roadside. Indeed, it is doubtful if any human being ever arrives, though shoeless and hatless and shirtless, too, at the same state of utter content as that of the peaceful clam. lying motionless for years in the particularly dirty mud of a sewer er-neighboring beach, and drow- silly absorbing the juicy bits of carrion and sewage which the restless and un-
 happy ocean eachtide drops into it's open shell as the easiest and cheapest l way to get rid of them.
 Are you willing to be clam in order tc be perfectly satisfied? Or even a shirt1ess beggar at the side of some far eastern mule track? Does the ideal of perfect happiness, complete con- tentment satiated satisfaction, really charm you when you come to see what it leads to and by what means it must be attained?
 When MT. Howe says that "a farmer is never satisfied" he is simply con- densing into a phrase the thought of scores and hundreds of farmers cus- toners and visitors. Only last summer a customer who called at my gardens and wanted some head lettuce, sniffed with undisguised contempt when I ex- plained that hadn't anysthat partic- ular day; that my sowing in succession L. 1--E schedule, because of the unusual weather, so that, while my third d-sowed plat was used up, my fourth-sowed had not yet headed properly.
 "Oh, yes," she said, tossing her head, that's the usual farmers talk; always blaming the weather l didn't say anything but I thought to myself: What should I blame but the thing which causes the delay, to my loss and your inconvenience? ?' There seems to be an idea prevalent iE some quarters that farmers, as a class, are especially given to grouch- mess; that they really enjoy finding fault: in short, that they are never even if daily miracles of ideal wealth CT and abnormal crop -fecundity should
 be worked for their behoof. wonder if it is so? If we are, take Us "by and large" an agglomeration of snarlers?
 1 know one who isn't. For I hap pened to overhear him, the other day, when another one asked him how he was.
 ''F,ine as a fiddle" came the hearty response. Dye know this snow,"- it was then showing and drifting like a young blizzard,-"is worth a hun dPn To keep on till it's two feet deep over the hull ten acres!"
 In fact, I know two who aren't. For met another, couple of weeks ago, and asked him how his season had turned out.
 as could ask and a durned sight better'n had any right to expect" He explained that inability to secure adequate help in the spring had com pelled him to put in his crops without his usual careful preparation of soil, but the abundance of rain had more than evened up things. He had har- vested a big yield of oats and a whacking crop of potatoes, both of which are scarce and high. He had not only saved the wages he wanted to pay in the spring, but he had ob- ta1ned phenomenally high prices for an unusually big harvest in the fall
 All due to highly satisfying slant in the weather
 1t is extremely probable that there are some farmers who just enjoy be- ing miserable; who would rather find fault than give thanks; who prefer snarling to smiling; who can't even say grace good-naturedly; who os- tentatiously carry an amending com piafnt against everything and every body in the droop of their eyelids and the pucker of their lips and the malevolent twist of their cervical ver
 tebrae.
 But how about others in other yoca- tions? The very worst snarleyow I ever knew wasn't a farmer but a doc tor. The most sour souled spiritual dyspeptic I ever lodged when I saw Finn coming wasn't a farmer, but a lawyer. The very meanest and sting jest hunks of a penny -grabber I ever heard of wasn't a farmer but a mil lionaire in big city. But those in- dividual cases don't justify me in as- serting that all doctors are grumpy or all lawyers grouchy or all rich men misers.
 My own impression is that there's whole lot of human nature" in doctors and lawyers and bankers and farmers, and all the rest of the "billin'''.
 My further impression is that the way in which man looks at life or takes its chances depends more upon his inside machinery than on his daily pursuits.
 And my strong conviction is that the farmer who, more than any other man, depends for his results on the cratic operation of weather and other conditions which he can neither fore see nor prevail against-that the far p1er who is always and everywhere at