Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1917-08-29
TAKING A TRIP TO the WOODS.

| ''A|' 'HS "ooas StaHtlIy CldQ ana WIFI
out supplies to live the simple lifs
alone for a week or two. 4 She Is goins
| to revert to natural conditions get hel
| own food and live as the primitive
| woman lived.''
OF course the girl lacks common
sense. However, she is going the right
| way to acquire it. Common sense is
| only another term for experience anc
observation and action controlled BY
understanding gained by individual ex.
perience or attention to the teachings
of experience. She'll come out of tbs
woods--if she ever gets there and stays
few days-knowing more.
1t might be an excellent experience
for any number of girls who are dis
satisfied with life as it is and who fail
to appreciate their advantages. Six
days Of starvation and mosquitoes and
terror in the woods alone are likely to
create fine appreciation of home and
mother. Father would come in also ON
the appreciation effect. She'll come
home when she comes and smile at the
dlShpan, feel that sewing on her own
buttons and darning tear in her
dress are privileges. that chance to
go to school beats a full house OF
woods and simple living in the open
A lot of fool ideas that she has classi-
fled as romance will take their proper
classification as foolishness with past
participle. busting and sweeping and
putting the sitting room in order will
eyes. In short, she'll know more If she
stays in the woods
1t takes pretty strong argument to
anock the foolishness out of the heads
OF lot of young people, takes argu-
ment, experience and time. Some of
them hold out until middle age and a
few never learn but given a chance to
know hunger and cold and unprotect-
ed fright and utter loneliness they pick
~ AZ q NCth VI WV "iidI olilCl " NC
would require years. ...
SO with the boys: When the boys
come home from the wars they'll
know more than when they went
away. Home will seem like paradise.
probably better, for ALI the folks will
be waiting for them at home and quite
a lot Of US may be shy in paradise.
They will have discovered that a
chance to go to work every morning
at or 7:30 has its supreme excellen-
cies. A job that didn't look good be-
fore they went away will have a shin
ing glamor, that there is harder work
and harder living away from home
than at home, that tasks that looked
like mountains once are mere molehills
by comparison. 1t will do the boys
good in that way. 1t will either make
a spoon or spoil a horn. But let us
comfort ourselves in the knowledge
that spoons are made and horns
spoiled every day at home and in
peace.
Older folks get notions. The mex
perienced man furnished the poet the
line asserting that man never Is but
always to be blessed
Men leave good feAms and good bust
ness in Iowa to follow the will the
wisps that dance afar. Most Of them
come stringing back full Of experience
and without much of anything else in
side of them except appetite and
anxiety. But they have learned. How
well they know. And how sweetly con-
tent they are to stay put afterward.
Inside of US all a strain Of foolish
ness, an unrest and dissatisfaction
with conditions exists. 1t is the nomad
left in us, the spirit of the pioneer con-
tinuing in US like the rudimentary
muscles with which our ancestors used
to climb trees and swing from branches
or perhaps, in instances, root Tor
acorns. But on the whole few of US
stick fingers in the fire more than
once. We learn quickly. On the aver
age once is enough.
When the little lady arrives out OF
the big, woods. which is likely to be
along about 1920 on the day she went
in. she'll ask mother if there isn't
something she can do to help-that Is
she will if she has an underpinnlns OF
good sense and right feeling.