Norwich bulletin., 1919-07-04
THE IDEAL OF FARM LIFE

a discouraging sign when anybody, anywhere, sets forth the idea of any sort of ife-without ?work as an ideal It's an alarming sign when really con siderable numbers of people accept such as desirable. For life without work would be neither ideal nor even desirable. There's such thing as too much and too hard work. Just as there may be too much and too expressing play. You remember the old rhyme about what happens to Jack when he has too much of either. Perhaps it's our over stimulating climate that make sus Americans tend to over doing in both directions. Certainly something has that effect. We are apt to work too hard when we work and play too hard it's so in baseball. We're prone to run things into the ground in our de- vasta ting hurry to do two mems jobs in half one mans time. And then we blame work for the smash-up, not ourselves, as we should.
 For work is a human essential It is to life what the bones are to the body. Somewhere, far down in the scale of existence, I belie<e there are 'elly-fsh without any sl f1etons. Per haps they may be good {,r crabs and Holsters to eat. But that's all they're good for or ever will be till they de- velope a backbone. A man without vertebrae or ribs or any other bones
 
 which is not vertebrated by and built around the skeleton of work is quite as pitiab1e.
 A clam has no bones-on it's insides. that is-and it never does any work. It just lies in the mud and lets the tides wash food into it's open shell. It is about the most perfect development of this life without work idea I :suow of. And by and by some busy biped comes along, yanks MT. Clam out of his mud bed, cuts him out of his shell and makes chowder of him Which is the very best use any such kind of critter could be put to. Unfortu- nately, clam initiating man or wo- man isn't fit even for chovderi
 In one of Charles kinesIey's books is a reference to the History of the great. and famous nation of :s~ the Doasyoulikes, who -emigrated from wanted to play on Jews-harp all day long, It seems they moved to the land of Readymade at the foot of the Happygolucky Mountains where flap doodle grows wild and little pigs run round, ready roasted. And they sat under the fapdoodle trees and let the fapdoodle drip into their mouths. and took chance bite of roast pig when any one. ready roasted, ran against their mouths, and generally had wonderfully comfortable. easy-going life -.
 Till the overhanging volcano blew up ana Killed tWO-thIrdS Of them: and till the hapdoodle trees had all died: and till they had eaten all the little ready roasted pigs; and till the lions came and drove them into the trees for safety; in short, till they all turned into apes and gorillas and were exterminated in the search for speci- mems to put in menageries and mu- seums.
 Which may or may not have been a fairy tale. But, by Jimmy, it's the fv7V of -I+ I1 people who make life without work their aim which ever could be- writ l ten. If they don't actually turn into apes in time, they and their descend ants degenerate into things quite as useless and really more pitiful.
 Talk about life without work! Why work is the one and only thing that makes life worth living.
 Whether you live it on a farm or anywhere else.
 THE FARMER