Norwich Bulletin Newspaper, January 16, 1920, Page 7

(Written Specially For The Bulletin.) “One by one thg roses fall.” One by one our most cherished superstitions are knocked over by experience. One by one our pet weather signs fail. It's getting so that a farmer man can't always tell which way the wind blows, or form any sure idea about the weather, even when he does tell. Within the last month two of my special, particular, never-to-be-dis- puted weather signs have gone into the waste-basket of discard. One morning .all the brooks in the vicinity began to show signs of “an- chor ice.” . That afternoon their orig- inal beds were one spongy mass of ice and slush;. they were lifted f: their natural level and, in ma; wera spreading on both acres of usually dry ground. ‘Anchor ice is a sure sign of a com- ing thaw.” I've heard that over and over again, ever since I was ‘“knee high to a grasshopper.” To make it sure, 1 agkeq every fellow I chanced to meet if he knew what the anchor jce meant. Two were farmers; one a wood-chopper; two were hunt- ers and trappers; one was a farm- hand and one a retired farmer, closing on his eighties. The same answer e from every one. “Be a thaw, to- sides over norrow.” But, instead, “tomorrow” morning found the mercury well below zero. For three consecutive mornings it ran from ten to twenty below, and never so warm as zero at any time dur- ing the three days, if the'thermometer was kpm in the shade. Two of the > extreme cold was accompan- a piercing wind which went through sheepskin lined coats and woolen sweaters and flannel shirts as they had been cheese-cloth. Meet- e of the old farmers the second id as bitingly as I knew how; s is your idea of a thaw, what vould vou consider a cold snap? b, well” he chuckled, “all signs ail in dry weather.” But it wasn't dry weather. It was winter weather: snowy, and blowy and windy and cloudy, with frequent es of hard snowflakes that bit ng when they struck one's o sharp gravel. few days afterward, A time-honored sign keeled over another and the my very Then, bucket before before finally dying, it flopped around and 'tother way, so as to Lar, whichever way it = before had been a dull ening night. Not yed or weadlet. or ryiftinon vyl in the leaden skies. ing before sun-up the east- zon glowed like a. huge car- with all the shades of red a ine for his palette. any one weather ich has been law and gaspel | dreds of years. it is the one| ed in the universally known r on his way:"” ng gray and morning red | brine down raln on the pilgrim's head.” It was “eveninz grayv and merning at time, for sure. As grayv a and as red a red as 1 ever | turned out as bright | and warm as anv reason- | n could ask in December.| it a cloud after ten o'clock. and op of rain or flake of snew all | however, was not the end of| The western skv. that same eve- ing, was aglow with rosv radiance. a5 red as a sky can be without clouds to gather up the color and mass it. And the next morning the enst was a | heavy Fray.” hut, alas! for the eler who trusted to its false prom- Abont nine o'élock a few snow- flakes fell—big. fat, smoggy fello h vou eould almost hear “plump” hey struck the ground. They soon into rain, and it drizzled and all day: was still dfizflingt n. 1 went to bed. there you have it. Isn't there anything more we can d on? Has Nature become in- d with the prevalent human folly knowing her own mind and the valent human vice of not keeping | her own word? Has she, too, gone “on strike” against her own joh?. Has she set out to prove that the long oh- served sequences which we have come to believe were her “laws” are noth- ine more than manifestations of her whims which she can and ‘will vary at caprice? 9 \ , OLD WEATHER SIGNS DON'T COME TRUE "l early fall frosts. { But if neither anchor ice nor red 1t she has, then, in a spirit of hu- mility I beg to ask, ere are we at? Also, Where do we get off? _And, fur- ther, Where do we go' from here ‘What am I going to do, next spring,’ when the whip-poor-will pipes up from the woods back of the house? For almost a hundred and fifty years that bird has fixed the season for corn-planting on this particular farm by the John Farmer family. I should as soon thinkof planting it in Novem- ber as of doing so before I hear his monitory whistle. Or of delaying it till June as of waiting a single unnec- easary day after 1 have heard him. For a century and a half we of the clan have planted our corn under his directions and, in all that time, ha‘el never lost a erop by late spring or Once, indeed, away back in the 1850's, we lost a crop through a mid-July freege, such an occurrence.as had never before been heard of in this vicinity and has not been since. But every other farmer in a radius of many miles lost his crop, too, no matter when it had been planted. So that “doesn’t count.” sunsets mean Aanything, henceforth, how do I know that the whip-poor-| will may not, also, prove a false pro- phet, next time? And, if the whip- poor-will, why not also the blue-bird and the robin and the trout and the low-flying swallow and the “wet” moon and the sun-dog and the 'steen other signs which we old farmers have come to depend on? It begins to look as if the whole world was turning topsy-turvy and everything was moving ’tother~end-to. Some peoples used to Dbelieve that they could make rain by firing bombs into the upper air and explod- ing them there. As proof, they point- ed to the asserted fact that great battles, with extensive use of artil- lery, have usually been followed by rain. D'ye s'pose that the world-war, with its unprecedented expenditure of huge explosive shells, some of which| are alleged to have been flung as high ag fifteen milies into the air, can have 8o discombobulated the orderly funmc-! tions of the etaer—or whatever it which is that high—as to make it re- verse itgelf and stand ‘on/ its owr head, so to speak? Or has the ordi- nary common air in which we, lowa: down. move and breathe and have our being—has it caught the contagion of stubbornness and cnnlrarin(‘ss and Iml.nt\ss and dwhuneslv and - “don't- care-a-dam-a ness” which- seem to be the prevailing characteristics of n< deplorably un-admlnb!e "h\uun na- i i che'erl?l%‘ uecem?d' m hduuld ’}fi it ‘proves wi et Ono is tbqut as likel to be bosh, Qld ke, _one time - when nothing the rule ang everything-turned out different, and some timid soul inti- mated that it looked as if the end of the world was near at hand; - “Oh, hosh! The old girl" (thereby disre- spectfully alluding = to Step-mother Nature) “has got her hind leg.over the traces' and is Jest kickin' a little; that’s all. She’ll git over-it.” Let us trust so, even in these latter times. Seripusly, though, thu}g unexpected 'tother-way, facings of Nature ought to give us all food for thought. We boast ourselves overmuth of our knowledge and of the ‘strides” of science. Really, those Ystrides” are about as clear and wide-reaching as a blind mole’s vision. Sald one of\the wisest of men when congratulated o his wonderful sclentific discoveries: "! have spent my life picking up p bbles on the shore of an infinite ocean. The supremest knowledge to whlz:h any man can attain is the comprehen- sion. of his own ignoranice. We talk glibly of the “laws” of Na- ture as we might of the acts of the legislature. We build our plans upon our alleged understanding of them. Yet our very use of that word “law” in this connection is ,in itself. proof of our complete ighorance. When we spezk of the “law” of gravitation all we mean is that, hitherto, so far as has been observed, an apple tossed in- to the air has dropped back to the ground. Or that’a baby falling*out of fourth story window has usually hit the pavement too hard for its future welfare: In other words, we have erected an observed sequence of events ‘into a “law,” and undertake to tell Nature that the “law” is her master, Perhaps it is—ahd perhaps it isn’t. The ‘simple. faet is that we don't KNOW. We think what we think and we see what we think we see: we pile argument on argument and cap rea- son,with reason; we chon logic and some of us are proud of our de-duc- tive and some of our in-ductive pow- erg But—we—don't—know. Practical, everyday wisdom, as ap- plied to the details of life on the farm, we'll say, consists first, of all in a candid, unreserved cOnfession . of comparative: ignorance. Among its fruits are humility and the complete absence of dogmatism. It is never cocksurp of anything exeept that it isn’t sure. This doesn’t mean that we should sit down contented with our ignor- ance, making no effort to diminish its boundaries. ‘“We can't know for sure, so there’s no use trying to find out” ig not a commendable rule of conduct, True, the ocean of knowledge is infi- nite. True, we can never hope to sound all its depiks nor harness all its mysterious Guif Streams to turn grindstones. But that is no reason why we ROUP Vi ey Spasmodic_croup is nsually relieved vmh one application of— sVaro BODYGUAP.D“ 304 607 ¢ ed to follow | sia shouldn't continue to pick up and study the pebbles along the shore, or soung the s t:(ll t their llf‘d‘we em or build ‘ships to ‘sail the 'seven seas. We shall draw many wrong conclu- s from our pretty pebbles, and we shall fail to discover all the ledg: ana we shall make many a bad mess of it trying to force the tides to wark for us, and we shall drown by the hiindreds when our ships go down by icebergs or in storms or ripped open by uncharfed rocks. But every ieistake is a discldsure, every error a warning, every failure a lesson. Little by little, grain by ain, the broad-based pyramid of mowledge grows toward attainment. We shall never live to see it crowned with certainty; perhaps no “last man” of a dying race may ever see that conclusion. Nevertheless,' ft is not only-a duty but a privile; for each one of us to add his mite, as he may, towards the enlargement and uphuild- ing of the pile. Perhaps, far off, at the “divine event towards which the whole creation meone may actually come ,to something with absolute certainty. In ‘the, meantime, we don't, any of us. Wec might as well be decently huimble and admait it, 8. Th's 1s just as true in politice as it Is in weather! x FARMER. YANTIC Wednesday afternoan at 3.30, as a traveling salesman for a large grain concern was coming to Norwich from Willimantic in a Ford car, the car left the highway near Badger’s pond, this side of the Frink farm, and overturned, taking part of the guard rail protect- ing the state highway with it. John O'Connor of New London, passing in‘a limousine. was the first to give assist- ance, and the men got out of thelr curtained car none the worse for the accident. A couple of local automo- hilists arrived later and the car was righted in little time &nd started on its way. It didn't travel far before it of the radiaior while it was everturn- ed. This was refilled. Aside from =4 bent mudguard, no damage to the car was noticeable. Paul Brymme and Thomas Carberry held a successful dance in Fire Engine = T mq ’IIlllllllfll!llflllflll!mlll'll T 7 il CLEANED TO GOODS CALLED FOR AND DELIVERED EVERY DAY BY AUTO GIVE US A TRIAL 150 MAIN “YOU CAN RELY “WE CLEAN ABSOLUTELY” HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OUR PATRONS Furs, Evening Gowns, Gloves and Slippers Postal Telegraph Office, Norwich Works, New London—Branches, Mystic and Bristol. / ‘PERFECTION TELEPHONE 743-2 STREET { ON SHALETT’S” SALE NOW GOING ON SALOMON’S, 100 Franklin Street Closing out our Winter stock. Big reductions in Men’s Sweaters, Flannel Shirts, Woolen Hose, Gloves, Working Pants and Heavy Underwear—Alse Boys’ Sweaters, Stock- : ings and Underwear. SEE OUR WINDOW DISPLAY FOR PRICES SALOMON?’S GENTS’ FURNISHINGS, HATS, SHOES and BOYS’ WEAR 100 FranklmStr«t A FEW MINUTES'’ WALK FROM FRANKLIN SQUARE. OPEN EVENINGS :[i A Nww;cb,&nn- i U 2 es, | stapped, as the water had leaked out’| %all Friday evening. Although the night was most disagreeable, forty couples were in attendance. Rowland's jazz band rnmished snappy music. As | soon as the orchestra can be engagedi| again, another dance will be held. All sorts of discarded clothes are be: ing brought to the front to be wor by the villagems at the poverty social to be held in the parish hall. Arthur Desrosier, nizht overseer in| the weave room of the Liberty Woolen cempany, has moved his family to Norwich'\from the ' Gardner cotiage, which he has occupied all fall. Local people who have followed with interest the progress of the oil bearing felds of Homer, North Louisiana, not- ed this week that salt water has been discovered in the product of some of the big oil gushers.. Harry D. Billings, favorably known here, is at present in | Heomer and has seen many changes there in the past two months, * Several from here have been at- thacted to the city by the famous pic- ture Auction of Souls. o Miss J. M, Pendleton, school nurse for soveral -surrounding towns, has been busily . engaged during the past month taking the height an@ weight record of schaol children. In many schools 25 per cent: of the children have been found under weight, and in places the percentage has been higher, showing the need —of such systematic investigation. Sugar can now be purchased in the village, prices varying from 20 to 22 cents. per ‘pound. The wedding of Michael O'Hearn and Rose Burke Garceau took place in_St. John’s churgh, Fitchville, Wednesday at 9 a. m._The attendants were Miss Katherine McCarthy and John Driscoll, and after the ceremony there a breakfast and reception ot the home of, rra. After a short wed- and Mrs. earn will T earn’is a veteran of war and \is ur for Nathan Gilman of Boz- T State Fanmrv Tnspector Miss Julia n the villaze during the f thn W wopien mills. with appeared among them on h flyer drawn by his pet goat, Several of the papils of t sohool are home because- ot coug] eleds envious Tuesday when he flexible AT Swift’s Premium Oleomargarine The high quality of this food entitles it to a place on’ every table, - Only the best and purest materials are used. ' If is Pprepared in cool, spotless rooms, and is never touched by hands. To its other attractions this food adds the lmpoflant one of econo: You make a worth-while saving on every pound ‘you buy Get.a pargk{ s age from your grocer today. Swift & COtnt)any,fiv Mnnufactums of Gem Nut Marg: ry throats ry soothing und Foians bro phys -throat, irri The Towers this week. Coasting has not been as good in and all the children dre making the most of the sport, Wathley of spending a few days _Wwith Miss J. M. WO Veurs, Miss Rose Pendleton! Michael Mountajn of Philadelphia is in the village for some time. Margaret Coughlin, been in town with-her parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Coughlin, for several wfieklf—&nd in-Westerly -with her sis- Scanlon, \’\’ednesdnv for New. York to resume . 'Miss Mrs. M. F. her dutfes in‘the’of fompany. Springfield Monday. ‘anon relatives. Harry Northrup day morning. About evening. Supervisor Gove \\'lllnm Tibbitts is sledding wood allln town this week; also conducted a e e e I of a Great Country Swift's Premium Oleomargarine is the most wxdcly distributed brand of oleomargarme. ; It is a most excellent food to furnish strength for the day’s work and play. It is wholesome and contains a high percentage of energy-creating elcment%, Its wonderful delicacy of flavor, its richncss, make it ideal to serve on your table and to use in all your cooking. Delicious rich cakes, smooth cream sauces, tasty, well-seasoned vegetables, owe theu' goodness to Michael O'Hearn was a visitor in Misd - Iimma: Badger 'ha# returned from a stay of several days with Leb- been ependinz the past week With his aunt. Mrs. John Kilroy, of Yantic. SALEM Services were held church Sunday morning, taking for his -theme.Full Surrender. There will be no preachm; next Sun- $13 was rmuzed from supper held in Grange hell Saturday After suprer, volleyball and other games were played. Qe o o f £ rga!mei F83 ; A High Quality Nut—’Mhr‘g’nnfie & A LI immuuuImlmmmnumnwmmmmmmnmnm [ I mi ns nro- i nounce them a, per- perfect remedy fo ‘Wednesday. caller in Colchester. Kent 1is teachers’ meeting attifé/Center :achd Master George Scimenowitz tained a party of young friends Sul R e 21 Miss Minnie Kingsiey -was a.rece§t enf day afternoon in hvnm' of his six| birthday,, who has|a re Nathan spent a few friends here. left town days ice of the' Thermos Mr. and Mrs. W erg Sati Mrs. urday. Iy I of Stonington has|Mrs. W. B. Mr. and -Mrs. New I don Tuesds: a Tucker of North Plains. was the guest Sunday of Kingsley., Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Houston aad Carl Rogers Miss Nellie Grny oI Culchesmr a recent caller in town. . Strong of called on frg=nds in this place Sunda Mrs. Carrie Cranmer. of New Hagen' North ~ Plains 2] r ecently with James Beebe and Herman Neilson ‘of, Orange were callers here Synday, amy and Edwin Harris were Norwich ecaliz} Darling, Fred| L3 her sistes,, were ~ in. the local the pastor the Always bears visited the schools \ L B e 4!3?!‘I‘!Kfi'!l*””’llllm CASTORIA In J:;?;fi%:?r%fl;mufi Tt Eew i o5