Norwich bulletin., 1917-08-10
ANTICIPATORY ACTION OFTEN CHECKS LOSS

for our youthful delectation had a moral attached. My two little stories are not fables. Yet they seem to have certain lessons belong ing with them. I'm sure that a part, at least, of my readers will be able to read those lessons, without the aid of map. diagram, and dictionary. formance where two and two always make four and twice six is always twelve.
 Nor is it a merely mechanical pro- cess where one cog wheel always meshes accurately with it's train and drives it steadily at a fixed speed.
 Nor is it a chemical operation where the addition to just so many grains of alkali to an acid will exactly neutral ize it.
 Farming is a good deal of Guess and Gamble, in which you peer and squint at a whole lot of things, and rack your brains in imagining what particular kind of trouble is most like ly to break loose next, and "fgger out how you're goin to meet it if it comes, and in the mean time keep right on scratching gravel.
 You work as hard as you can today, all the while remembering last sea son. and attempting to forecast next month.
 You estimate a dividend as shrewdly as you are a ble, guess at divisor and
  not be within a gunshot of the truth You've simply got to go "sy suesa and by gosh" large part of your an nual farming journey. You've got to take things as they come without ever knowing beforehand exactly how they're going to come.
 And this is a mighty big But, too you've got, somehow, to be ready for things when they come and however they come. To this end you've got to be eternally ready for a whole lot Of things which don't come. as well a S for most of those which do. You've got to be constantly watch 1, ing out for every last little cloud rfs- ing on any horizon, whether it turns out eventually to be the precursor of nail-storna, or only a fading shadow melting harnlessly away in the noon sun.
 You've got to be ready for blight if 1t comes or if it does not come. You've got to keep your barn roof tight whether your hay turns out A No 1 One. or isn't worth cutting. For neith- CT blights nor hay weather give mo- tice, weeks beforehand, of their plans and intentions
 Like old Uncle Ike you've got to hope for the best and be ready for the worst all the time.
 Because farming is so much of
 
 glect even simple precautions. Since it's mostly chance, anyway. they seem to reason that all they can do is just to '1et things slide and take what's coming to them with as good a grace as they can.
 Which is just where they're dead wrong.
 For even chance has it's laws. Vague and ill-defned though they may seem, they act and they govern. neverthe- leGs, D~aw . card at randorS many times from an each time shuffled pack and yOuH draw au ace out of thirteen times. on the average.
 The professional gambler who = keS his money on the turn of a card or the fall of the dice studies These vague laws and wins your money oftener than you do his. even when the game IS absolutely "On the square, said about the chance-y natr-o farm op the imp and the impossibiIity cf foreseeins all that is going to happen or of being ready for everything, the fac still remains that the farmer who looks ahead the farth- est and who harks ba ok the most un- derstardingly and who get ready. as he can. for the widest variety of