Norwich bulletin., 1916-02-19

l thing a well is intended for,-to gather
 it and hold it by the bucketfull. | And there you have it.
 
 | What's Hiram Jenks on an average | farm with it's average plant and av ! craze conVeniences, going to do with his hatfull of fresh eggs, which must 1 go at once to some place which is 1 cold" but with mo dampness'? 1 Do you know, MT. or Mrs. Average Farmer?
 Blest if I do.
 I'm going to leave him right there, l between the cellar and the ice-box and 1 the well, with his head bare and his i hat full of eggs, wondering if he's 1 got to build a thousand dollar cold storage plant before supper to keep them in overnight. I'm going to 1 leave him there, because, now I've got him there. l don't know what else to do with him. I hope he won't mind it, but, if he feels lonesome, I'll cheer fully lend him few bales of farm and poultry papers with a whole lot more of advice to read.
 Seriously, l wonder what sort of a place some of these advice-monger think a farm is.
 So far as l can reason out their ideas, passing my premises on the sort of things they tell us to do, it would appear that they assume all farms to be either fitted with cold storage plants or situated within easy reach of one: to have rivers of run ming water piped through them with bath tubs and toilets and septic drain age systems to dispose of wastes and sewage: to have electric lights and gasoline engines and windmills and automobiles,-and Zeppelins and hy- dro- planes and 305-miliimetre guns to amuse the children, perhaps. Taking all the advice they give us, from one end of the year to the other, and raking it up into one winrow it would seem to include the necessity of every farmer having about all these 1 th1ngs-and a few dozen more, just for frills round the edges.
 Great Scott, don't they know or can't they ever be taught that there is country place.? The tiroe hasn't come yet, and it isn't even in sight on the way towards my neck O woods when the ordinary farmer of ordinary means and working under ordinary conditions on the ordinary farm can afford what are sometimes called "city cOnveEiences''
 As a rule, his taxes are inordinately high; his insurance costs him all the companies dare put on without breaking his back, he has to pay constantly rising wages for labor that is steadily deteriorating in value and efficiency; often he has, too, to keep up the interest on a mortgage; he has to pay war prices" for such supplies as he must procure outside, while he still gets the same B cents for his dollars worth of produce when he sells it.
 He has to scratch gravel hard ani deep to get money enough to pay his various rates, set an adequate table and keep the family in shoes and other duds.
 Very likely he would be perfectly willing, nay, glad to spend a thous- and dollars on a plant for the purpose of bringing in two thousand dollars the thousand dollars first, over and above his necessary expenses. And getting that thousand is some trick, believe me, when he has to raise al- most three dollars worth of stuff to get one dollar towards the thousand.
 Perhaps the very hardest thing he has to do is to smile and look pleased when some bank clerk or dry-goods salesman who couldn't be induced by miles from the trolleys and the nov les and the billiard-rooms tells him, patronizingly, what a fortunate fellow he is to live in such a "loveIy' coun- try, and to have his own milk and eggs, etc, fresh every day.
 When the ordinary farmer comes to think over the dirty drudgery and the gruelling labor which are involved in getting those eggs and milk and but ter, etc, and reflects that his sum- mer visitor wouldn't even stoop to caring for one milch COW if he were paid ten times any possible value of her total output, then he is apt to say naughty words or, at least think them, l which is currently reported to be just as bad.