Norwich bulletin., 1919-09-26

which the tops and trimmings lie ir huge heaps and tangles among ~the bare stems of rejected trunks, a sum mer-long invitation to fire. because the choppers positively refused to burr them as cut; in fact. threatened to strike rather than do it.
 We farmers don't need to go into the factories and shops to find cases ot can find them amongst ourselves sometimes on our own farms Each one Of us will tread lightly over that last possibility. but we can bear down hard on our neighbors shortcomings. l think the saddest and most dis coura ging feature of the whole situa ton is the number of young people. o1 both sexes, who are outspokenly and una nashamedly looking after "soft snaps" They would take grievous of fense if told that they were thereby exposing their own soft heads Yet that is just what they are doing. For Mr. Purinton is everiastingfy right when he says that mean ugly tasks are inevitable and indispensable in every calling" Some snirch the clothes and befoul the hands. Others dirty the soul Too often. those who recoil from tasks which soil their white hands show no repugnance against practices which blot their souls with indelible deflements.
 Not SC very long ago, young neigh Dor of mine grew fired of the ''drudg-
 
 handles and took clerk $ job in a cor her grocery of a nearby city. His country bred strength and ambition soon won promotion and he was given charge of department. At the same time, he was initiated into some of the
 tricks of the trade" It is not my in tentlon here to reveal any of those which he has. now and then, confessed orcusat up to value clean heart even more than white hands. And he couldn't be comfortable under the re- quirements. Why,'' he once said to me, when it got so 1 couldn't look every one of my customers straight in the eye. but had to keep sduinting sideways to see how much they'd stand in the way of short weight or over charge, I felt like a skunk in a chicken coop"
 You see, the hurried and unwatchful customer might not know that he was a skunk-but he did. And he couldn't stand it.
 It didn'ts take him long to find out that loading manure was a much clean CT Job than that he was asked to do in the. store. The dirt of the one washed off with water, while the filth of the other stuck and stunk in his noStrils day and night. So he came back to the farm. But-and here's. the sorry, the saddening. the menacing truth
 Not another one of his fellow en- ployes followed him. TOT showed any sympathy with his disgust Instead. they called him .tquitter and
 moilycoddie" and laughed at his
 qualms, $ they chose to call his dis like of cheating.
 The others all preferred ''soft snap in moral cesspool to real mans hard work in the sharp but Winnowing winds of the country -
 God help us! What are we coming 10 when any considerable prODortion Of the oncoming generation hold such views and cherish such prospects?
 Up on my mountain there used to stand two maple trees. One lowered ID rom the very edge of a steep, rocky cliff. Nowhere within hundreds of feet was there any real soil-just a skin of hiIny dirt over the seanly rocks The tree roots wormed and twisted their way into and among those rocks in q nc' CT ending life-and- death struggle for existence. The tree itself was a twisted and gnaried trunk, with only q small crown of leaves high up where ali the winds of heaven combed it and Scourged it. When 'tapped'' in The spring, that tree seldom yielded so much as quart of sap from two spouts Tn twenty-four hours.
 but the sap was as sweet as syrup ana required almost no evaporat tion
 The other maple stood with it's feet right in the bed of a mountain brook It had shorter stem than the other but a vastly larger limb and leaf de- velopment. Life was easy for it. Ii Wds a much handSOmer tree than ifs cousin on the cliff. The brook sup- piled it's roots with plenty of moisture: the deep soil afforded them easy ac- cess to their food; the surrounding highlands sheltered it from all high winds When tapped" at sugarfng tune, 1t would fill four or five buckets with sap in a good day.
 And it's sap was about as tasteIess and about as sweet as rainwater, Five gallons of it wouldn't make as rnuch 6 art fror7 At the same time it took ten times a much fuel and time to boil it down.
 Nor IS this all; when the two trees got old and were cut for fuel the wood of the old fighter on the rocks was a hard as coal and made about as hot =nd as lasting a fire, while the wood oI the coodled tree by the brodk was 1ttle better than punk after six months seasoning
 There IS moral in this para bIe Of the two maple trees which even the young and thoughtless can discover if they really want to-
 THE FARMER