1320 
November 17, 1917 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
A Balanced Ration-Thanksgiving 
Part I. 
My children often ask some strange 
questions. That is a privilege of child¬ 
hood. The inability to answer them is 
often a strong indictment of our so-called 
wisdom and experience. For childhood 
miwt deal with the fundamental things 
of life, upon which all life and education 
are built. When we cannot answer their 
questions—what does it mean? That 
most of the vital questions of life cannot 
be answered—or that experience is too 
hard a master, or that education does not 
after all educate? 
INIost Tiia.xkful. — There has been 
much talk about a “turkeyless Thanks¬ 
giving” this year. This is a subject for 
“careful consideration” with any young¬ 
ster. White meat, dressing and egg gravy 
are essential as present blessings when 
you try to be thankful for past favors. 
Can you give full “ thanks” without them 
when you still have the wings and diges¬ 
tion of youth? I think my children are 
very doubtful about it, if I may judge 
from their questions. One of them put 
a long train of thought into the following: 
What was the most thankful thing you 
ever saw when you were a boy? 
Mathematics. —I will call this boy 
John. I knew him very well some 50 
years ago—about as well as I ever ex¬ 
pect to know anyone. He lived on a 
stony little New England farm with old 
people who had forgotten that they ever 
were children. Now .John went to the 
district school, where a farmer put in a 
Winter job as teacher. This man had a 
strong arm and a “head for sums.” No 
moral suasion about him—a hickory stick 
was more effective. As for mental dis'- 
cipline, there was nothing like arithmetic 
to turn the pig iron of a dull brain into 
steel! This farmer carried the whole of 
Coburn’s .\rithmetic right in his head— 
and there wasn’t much else there. No 
matter what a boy’s mental capacity or 
inclination might be, he was, in this man’s 
mind, a fool and a rebel unless he could 
W’ork j)romptly the awful problems which 
this man of figures put together. Poor 
John had no head for figures, and could 
not work up any interest in them. The 
teacher grafted him well with the hickory, 
but the grafts produced no answer to the 
sums. Then came the awful thi-eat of re¬ 
porting such stupidity to Uncle Daniel if 
those sums were not worked. 
The Fai.i.s. —If any of you older 
people ever “lived out” in New England 
as a sort of war charity after the Civil 
War, you will know what that meant to 
a boy like John. lie drove his brain hard, 
but the sums rose up and clogged the ma¬ 
chine. The climax came shortly before 
Thanksgiving on the proposed mental an¬ 
alysis of that famous race between the 
hare and the hound. The teacher claimed 
that he worked that out while husking 
corn. It must have been flint corn, for 
John could not make a dent on it. The 
problem was almost as follows: “A hare 
starts 500 feet ahead of a hound. The 
hare goes four feet at a jump, and aver¬ 
ages 81 jumps a minute. The hound 
jumps five and one-half feet and makes 
29 jumps a minute. The hare will lose 
one jump in eight from slipping or dodg¬ 
ing briers, while the hmnd will lose one 
jump in five. When they get to a hickory 
tree one-third of a mile away how close 
will the hound be to the hare?” 
Now .Tohn couldn’t tell then and I don’t 
believe he can now. I know that if one 
of my children approached me with such 
a “sum” I would refer him to mother 
and have some important engagement out¬ 
doors. To this day I do not know what 
became of that hare. lie may have es¬ 
caped. or the hound may have had him 
for dinner in place of a turkey. ,Tohn, 
if I remember right, had the hound some 
hundreds of feet ahead of the hare when 
he reached the tree. That would be im¬ 
possible when one ran for his life and the 
other ran for his dinner! 
Bread and W.\ter. — When my chil¬ 
dren fail to toe the mark at school or col¬ 
lege I get a written report from the 
teacher or the “authorities,” but in those 
good old days things were done by direct 
contact. So as .lohn did his chores that 
night he saw the teacher walk up and 
knock at the front door. This was no 
pleasant social call, but a iirompt discus¬ 
sion of the boy crop—and how to prune 
and cultivate it for higher efficiency. I 
imagine that .Tohn today, at Thanksgiving 
time, can shut his eyes and bring that 
scene back from childhood. The late 
afternoon, the dull gray landscape, the 
lonely crow flying home to the swamps, 
the last hen walking to the henhouse, the 
curious old horse stretching his head out 
of the front of his stall, and the discour¬ 
aged little boy holding the calf pail and 
imagining the( feai’ful judgment being 
prepared for him. .Tohn hid in the shadow 
of the lilac bush by the door and heard 
the teacher’s parting comment: 
“You will have to take stern measures 
W’ith him or his mind will work wrong and 
then he will get the upper hand with you !” 
And all because the dreaming little boy 
with a mind for poetry and history could 
not locate that awful hound properly. 
No, that farmer was not a tyrant. He 
was a good man cursed by intolerance, 
RURAL NEW-YORKER 
with the narrow spirit which would har¬ 
ness and measure humanity by one re¬ 
stricted rule. Ilis rule was “mathemat¬ 
ics,” and he would have killed the spirit 
of a born artist or musician or poet or 
doctor or lawyer if they could not work 
his sums. 
Scant Rations. — Uncle Daniel lost 
no time in starting John in locating 
that hare. 
“A nice thing when a boy of your age 
and your opportunities cannot do a sim¬ 
ple sum like that! You are to have 
nothing but brown bread and water, sir, 
until you do that sum. I do this for your 
own good !” 
“Can't I have any Thanksgiving din¬ 
ner?” 
“No, sir—nothing but bread and water 
until you do that sum !” 
Now I have learned much from my 
children, and had I been in John’s place 
with my present knowledge I should have 
played diplomat and asked the old gentle¬ 
man to fshow me how to do it! John did 
not think of doing that. His stomach was 
empty, and that made his courage any¬ 
thing but full. They had baked beans 
for supper that night, too! Oh, what a 
fragrance those beans did pour out upon 
the frosty air as John came in to fill the 
woodbox. Not for him! Uncle Daniel 
and Aunt Mary divided the beans between 
them, while .John had cold water out of 
the well and two slices sf cold brown 
bread. It may be that Mr. Hoover and 
his food experts wdll call this true “food 
conservation.” Why, they may tell you 
that nice brown bread with rye and In¬ 
dian meal and sour milk will make a full 
balanced ration. If anything be lacking 
in it one of those old-fa.shioned country 
open wells with the house built around it 
will supply plenty of protein in the water. 
Their theoories are all right, but I will 
take .John’s experience first of all. It 
would do us good to make all those food 
experts qualify for their job by living 
for a month on some of that brown bread 
and water before they talk “food conser¬ 
vation.” So .Tohn swallowed his brown 
bread, listened to various moral lectures, 
failed once more to locate the hare—and 
was finally sent to bed. 
Sustaining Power. — In those days 
when a boy went to bed he did not touch 
an electric button and flood his I'oom with 
light, nor did he undress beside some 
warm stove or radiator. He made a bolt 
through a cold kitchen, a colder back 
stairs and a still colder hall into an un¬ 
plastered room. He unbuttoned his 
clothes as he ran and often jumped into 
bed to finish undressing there—throwing 
his garments out one by one. You could 
see the stars through a hole at one end 
of the room. Through the window great 
splinters of moonlight drifted along the 
floor and into the deep shadows beside 
the chimney. Through the long night it 
seemed as if strange figures were called 
into life by those moonbeams—figures 
which crept softly out from the dark cor¬ 
ners and stood guard through the night. 
Some of the boys at school could easily 
locate the hound and the hare, but their 
minds were full of terror at those silent, 
drifting figures. The hare and hound 
stumped .Tohn, btit he had in his mind 
that which cannot be expressed in figures 
—imagination. Other boys might get 
under the bedclothes when the moon fig¬ 
ures began to walk the room, but .John 
had begun to read books which, though 
he could not understand them, were teach¬ 
ing him to find things far more valuable 
than the unloc.ated hare! And well he 
knew the sustaining power hidden for him 
in the shadows of that chimney. 
Discipline. —Now, of course I hear 
many of you saying: 
“Why did the Doy stand it? Why did 
he not, like the hero in the story books, 
run away and seek his fortune? Now, I 
would not have endured such injustice. 
Every human is entitled to food and shel¬ 
ter. Had I been that boy I would not 
h^e stood for it!” 
But, my dear friend, you would have 
stood right up and taken your discipline 
and your brown bread. From your talk 
it is evident that you know nothing of 
New England country life 50 years ago. 
In those days every boy and girl on a 
Yankee farm was tied up with cords of 
steel to a stern, unbending sense of dis¬ 
cipline which had come down for 250 
years to them. It started at a time when 
parents and rulers simply had to enforce 
an iron discipline over their children or 
soldiers or be wiped out. On the hard 
New England hills this family discipline 
held longer than elsewhere. Cars and 
Summer boarders, foreign workmen, 
wealth and “new thought” have done 
much to break it down, but had you lived 
in the spirit of it, as John did, you would 
have swallowed the injustice with the 
brown bread as he did, and most likely be 
all the better for it today. Of course such 
training made children secretive and 
“smart.” .Tohn knew as well as you do 
that brown bread is no balanced ration 
for a growing boy, but when you mix 
browa bread with gray brains you have a 
balance that will move the world. That 
night before he got into bed you might 
have seen^him crawling on his knees be¬ 
side the big chimney. Then when he did 
get into bed there were sounds which were 
surely not those of sleeping. The boy had 
found the “sustaining power” beside the 
chimney. What was it? Why, of course 
we must keep the climax of _a story for 
the end. This will be continued in our 
next! n. w. c. 
Five Good Reasons 
Why you should use 
L FRANK COE’S FERTILIZERS 
Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. 
1857 The Business Farmers’ Standard for Over 60 Years 1918 
1. Because they ire sold at right prices. 
Any business to long exist must pay a profit to the customer as 
well as to the manufacturer. E. Frank Coe’s Fertilizers are sold 
at the lowest price consistent with their high quality. The man 
who tries to sell you something for nothing insults your common 
sense. A good article always commands a reasonable price. 
2. Because E. Frank Coe Fertilizers produce results. 
Many farmers have used these fertilizers for more than twenty- 
five years and our list of satisfied customers is rapidly growing. 
You are interested in purchasing a fertilizer which will give you 
the largest crops at the least cost. E. Frank Coe Fertilizers 
help increase the quality and quantity of the crop and assist the 
farmer to secure greater profits. 
3. Because E. Frank Coe Fertilizers are no experiment. 
They are the result of over sixty years of continuous experience 
in the fertilizer business. They are recognized as “The Business 
Farmers’ Standard ” and are backed by a reliable concern the 
quality of whose goods has never been questioned. 
4. Because they are properly compounded. 
They are manufactured in accordance with the latest scientific 
methods, coupled with over sixty years of practical farm and 
factory experience. The plant foods are combined in right 
proportions to give the greatest return. The principal ingredients 
are wet mixed to secure a more intimate mixture than can 
possibly be obtained by ordinary dry mixing. These fertilizers 
are carefully cured, dried, finely ground and rescreened before 
shipment. These processes insure their delivery to the farmers 
in prime drilling condition.’ 
5. Because they are made of the best materials. 
E. Frank Coe Fertilizers contain high-grade agricultural chemi¬ 
cals, Dissolved Super-phosphates, Bone Phosphates, Blood and 
Meat Tankages in forms best suited to the needs of the crop. 
E. Frank Coe Brands are made for different crops and 
various soil conditions. If you will tell us the crops you 
intend to plant next season and the type of soil on which 
your farm is located, we will send you one of our special 
crop books without charge and suggest the brands which 
in our opinion, will give you the best results. 
Address Crop Book Department 
THE COE-MORTIMER COMPANY 
Subsidiary of the American Agricultural Chemical Company 
51 Chambers Street New York City 
Built Right 
in material and construction. No weight 
for team to carry. You get perfect results 
and long wear with a 
rifsl’H^ow 
Disks are forged sharp! has reversible gangs, 
separate levers, dust-proof oil-soaked hardwood 
bearings. Sizes for one to four horses. Also 
with extension head. "Weight boxes built in. No 
tongue truck necessary. Perfect balance, light draft. 
Write for new catalog and free book "The Soil 
and Its Tillage;” also for name of nearest dealer. 
The Cutaway Harrow Company 
666 Main Street 1 ■ ■ 
Higganum, Conn. - « % ■ 
A-f akcr of th e origin ^ * 
nat CLARK 
Disk Hor- ,) 
rotrs and 
Plows. k 
Superior Root Cutters 
Have changed a hard 
job Into an easy one— 
they are made along en¬ 
tirely new lines. 
They cut any kind of 
roots fast and easy (2 to 
3bushels per minute) In 
the finest possible shape 
for feeding. Ready 
for hand or power, no 
attachments. If not at 
your dealers, write us 
SUPERIOR CHURN & MFC. CO., NorthviUe, Michigan 
9 CORDS IN 10 HOURS 
WITTEf 
**Kcro-0il” Engines 
Immediate Shipment —All Styles— 
2 to 22 H-P.—No Waiting—Big Factory—Big 
Ontput—Prices most favorabio. Write tor my 
terma and prices—Cash. PasTnents or No 
money Down.—ED. H. WITTE. Pres. 
WITTE ENGINE WORKS 
1893 Oakland Ave., Kansas City, Mo. 
1892 Empiro BMs., PltUburg, Pa. 
BY ONE MAN with the FOLDING SAWING MACHINE. II 
saws down trees. Folds like a pocket knife. Saws any kind ol 
timber on any kind ol ground. One man can saw more timber 
with itthan two men in any other way, and doiteasler. Send 
lor FREE illustrated catalog Na A 68.ahowing Low Price 
and latest Improvements. First order gets agency. 
Folding Sawing Machine Co., 161 West Hairison St. Chicago, ill 
A Small California Farm K” 
crops you know about—alfalfa, wheat, barley, etc.— 
also oranges, grapes, olives and figs. Ideal for 
dairying, pigs, and chickens. No cold weather: rich 
soil; low prices; easy terms; good roads; schools 
and churches. Enjoy life here. Newcomers wel¬ 
come. Write for our San Joaquin Valley also Dairy¬ 
ing and Poultiy Raising Illustrated Folders, free. 
Cdl.* SEAGRAVES. Industrial Commissioner A. T. & S. F* RYaa 
1963 RAILWAY EXCHANGE, CHICAGO ^ * 
The Farm Brokers’ Association, Inc. ire®f^‘*good 
farms and other country real estate everywhere In New 
York State. Fersonally inspected properties. Careful 
descriptions. Right prices. CENTRAL OFFICE AT 
ONEIDA, N. Y., other ofilces throughout the State. 
