Norwich bulletin., 1919-11-28
THE VIEW POINT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

, on the summit, lay well-known lake of some 300 acres. Roads run along one end and one side of it. Another side is thickly planted with bunga- lows and summer cottages. I have driven those roads and in among those bungalows on the lake scores of times. have helped draw ice from it's frog en surface, many winters. And I had always mapped 1t in my mind as a sort of double tailed letter O, fair ly round but for two Insignificant quirks which projected out from it. Imagine my surprise to discover that it was really more the shape of a dumb bell, with one long and crooked silver fraying off at one end.
 As ] have intimated, my home is in a valley. To one side rises the the range on whose highest summit I stood. On the other side rises an- other mountain sleeper and more densely wooded and, from the valley floor, seeming just about as, high as it's running mate. once more 1 was shown how deceptive are appearances. The mountain on which | stood was really so much the higher of the two that the, other shrank before my gaze into a mere wrinkle on the earthS S skin. Instead of looking up against it asI do every day, when working in my fields, I now looked easily over it upon rolling country beyond of plowed fields and pastures and white painted farm -houses. All Of which were as completely out of my sight when in the valley. as if they had been on another world.
 I'm getting too old and stiff to climb mountains every day for the view. But'I had Battered myself that IT knew about everything in the Way of farms, roads, brooks, ponds, woods etc, in that valley. Nevertheless when suspicious glint as of water led me to turn5 my field glasses to- ward certain nook in the low hills I discovered there, entirely surrounded by woods and. apparently, by encir- cling hillocks, tiny lakelet of whose existence 1 had never to that moment dreamed. Later. trudged to it and found it real "tarn" or mountain mere' as I supposed the English would call it, of an acre or two area and a. well marked shore line, proving that 1t was permanency and not mere pool temporarily filled by the rains. We'll, these were few of. the things which the landscape with which I am most familiar of any in the world disclosed to me-when Ilooked at it from a different point of view.
 Did it ever occur to you that there are some things in your immediate neighborhood that would look diff ferent to you, if you should go where you could look down on them, instead of forever looking sideways at them?
 Does it ocedr to you that the same differences in topographic detail which a new point of view .discloses. may also exist, in other matters. if you would only look at them from dif- ferent standpoints?
 You and spend most of our time and have got to spend most of our ! time working dirt over our. fields. We've got to keep blowing and har- rowing, cultivating and hoeing, grub ping and scratching. digging and delv- ing in the dirt under ouA feet if we're going to make a living of it. We come to know those fields, every stone and stump in them. every gravelly deposit, every ledge .out tcron. every muck hale 1 every square foot of loamy soil We do this. not because the pursuit of that particular kowledge is specially ! attractive, but because we must do it ] if we are 10 get our living off those i fields. I'm not going to suggest any rela xation or 1et-up in that labor. But. as practicaI men engaged in an unnitigatedly practical pursuit, might we not find some practical advantage if. now and then. when opportunity offered. we lifted our eyes from the few square feet of dirt we are called on to dig. and took, a larger view of | the whole shooting- from a l higher outlook and at a different an- 1 gle?
 A meteorological expert (which is bthe modern name for an old fashion ed weather prophet). once said, some what testify that no farmer could ex.
 pect meteorologyi to predict the ex. act weather. every day. over just hi.
 particular half-acre. We'll all agree
 with him that it hasn't done anythin.
 of the sort, so far. But it sometime!
 does get the weather fairly right owe
 a whole state.
 One trouble with us all is that VI
 don't make allowances for our owl
 limitations. Uncle Ike used to be
 wonder at raising corn. He alway
 had good corn, no matter what tn
 season. The rest of us used to tr,
 to get him to tell us how we could q
 it; to explain the trick. whatever i
 was. His answer was always the
 same.
 q can tell you what I did .thi
 year and why done it., he used t
 say; "but I can't tell you what I'll d
 next year till it comes, nor what yo
 fellows ought "a done this year or an
 other year. Your, land don't none C it lie like mine, nor it ain't the sam
 sore. What brings me a good cro might bring you a bin fun of pig nub l bins" .: 'rf
 Uncle Ike was wise old guy i more ways than one. He knew hi , limitations limitations of persona capacity and limitations of soil char : acter. -I--.-.-
 But I've often thought that, if "