Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1924-01-17
WITH THE
HIGH SCHOOL.
CLASSICS
By MARGARET BOYD

=. the King
Will bind thee by such vows az is
shame,
A man should not be bound by, yet the
which
No man can keep"
-IdyIIs of the King.
In view of the seer's statement that
no man could keep the nalf dozen
vows that Arthur required of his
knights, it is interesting to consider
Benjamin Franklin's experiment in
perfection.
Franklin tells us that when he was
young man he "conceiv'd the bold
and arduous project of arriving at
moral perfection. He listed thirteen
virtues-"all that at that time occurr'd
to me as necessary or desirable" The
thirteen were: temperance, silence,
order, resolution, frugality. industry,
sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanli-
ness, tranquility, chastity and humil-
ity-a longer list than Arthur required
Of his knights and more difficult.
Franklin felt he could not hope for
success in his project unless he could
make each of these virtues habit.
He knew he could not form so many
habits at once, so he devoted week
at time to each virtue The first
week he tried to make temperance a
habit; the Second week silence; and
so on through the list. When he had
finished his thirteen weeks, he started
in again with temperance, thus going
through his course four times year.
In time he felt it necessary to go
through the course but once year,
later but once in several years, and
finally not at all.
He made himself little book of
thirteen pages, allotting one page to
each virtue. He ruled each page with
a column for each day of the week
and a line for each virtue of the list.
Each night he reviewed his life of the
day, and marked a black spot in his
book for each offense of the day,
Franklin says he acquired the vir-
tues in an imperfect state having had
especial trouble with order and humil-
fly. He, however, attributes all his
success in life to the measure Of vir-
tue he did acquire through this expert
ment, together with the blessing of
God.
Franklin planned to embody his own
experience in a sort Of textbook of life,
to be called 1.-THE Art of Virtue a
book that "would have shown the
means and manner of obtaining vir-
tue, which would have distinguished it
from the mere exhortation to be good,
that does not instruct and indicate the
means; but private and public busi-
ness kept him SO busy he never got
his book written.
"It's what think to myself some-
times, as there need nobody run short
o, victuals If the land was made the
most on, and there was never a NOR
sci but what could find it's way to a
mouth. "-SiIas Mariner.
When political reformers and polit-
zeal economists speak of this subject,
they use the terms production" and
distribution One faction says no
one would need go hungry if all the
land were made the most of. They
say the reason some people never get
enough to eat is because there isn't
enough food in the world to go around
that is, they say the fault is with
production. These people believe that
there should be so heavy tax, on land
that no one could afford to own any
waste land They believe that if
taxes were assessed according to the
number of acres man owns instead
of according to the assessed value of
the land he owns that no man could
afford to own more land thar he could
farm intensively. They believe that
the present owners of large farms and
ranches would have to sell their land
to men who would farm it as intensive
~ as the European peasant farms his
little plot. These people believe that
when all the land in the country is
properly CULTIVATED CNCIybOuy Will
have enough to eat. They forget the
natural law recorded by Solomon
centuries ago, when goods increase,
they are increased that eat them"
The other faction says the fault is
with distribution. They say there is
plenty of food in the world If we
could just get it to those that need it.
We can appreciate this phase of the
problem when we go into any average
kitchen. The common statement is
that the American family throws into
the garbage can enough to feed the
European family: Certainly the scraps
of bread thrown away, the gravy and,
sauce left sticking to the sides of the
kettles and pans, the Feelings so thick
as to waste the vegetables or fruit,
the butter container with butter stick
ing to it, the bones filled with mar
row, and the scraps of fat meat
thrown away are all wastes of food.
On every farm there are windfalls,
fruit that the farmer cannot SELL In
the fields are potatoes too small to
gather; heads of cabbage too small to
market or to store for winter use; to-
matoes that would spoil before they
could be sold: and the like.
If we could stop all waste in kitchen
and store and field, the food saved
would certainly go far towards feeding
all those who now go hungry.