MILK STOOL PHILOSOPHY

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3394, 9 July 1926, Page 15

MILK STOOL PHILOSOPHY

(By J. J. Sprenger.) What a lot of things will run through a follow’s mind while he is milking—fancies, thoughts, ideas, or oven philosophy seems to come and go, and then sometimes there cdmes, as did to the writer of latp ( just memories of old tlm e songs ahd refrains, carrying me back to school days, to those happy days when wo were so unhappy. There was the one about the honest miller who lived by himself. Every , time the wheel went around he was gaining on his wealth, and so forth. But the part of that old song which interested us most was not the one about the revolving wheel but the part which told us that every time it went around the miller was gaining wealth. And oven today what a longing there comes to us to have, things run smoothly, to meet success, and to be steadily gaining on our wealth: and how impatient wo get when the reverses come. But life has always come that way and so.called success has received more lifts than reverses, and the thing to guard against most is that envious feeling which breeds the suspicion that everybody else is prospering at our expense and that they get more than they earn and we get less. One of tho fundamental principles upon which this universe is run is that in the end true efficiency Is always rewarded and inefficiency is not Some years ago the question was raised, "Can any one ever earn a million dollars in one short lifetime?” And the answer was t "Abraham Lincoln was worth a million dollars, but he was so busy earning it that he never collected it” Most of us are so busy collecting it we never earn it. All this endless chasing after wealth which soems to have gotten hold of us reminds me of a farmer’s dog that spent the livelong day chasing cars and trucks, and the larger the truck the harder the chase. Putting forth every effort he would run as if his life de. pended upon catching his prize. And yet what would he do with it if he did catch it? Naturally, most of us think that would be the least of nur troubles —to know what to do with riches—and not having had experience along that line myself, I am. hardly in a position to desire it. But ono thing I have learned from life and that is that any time anyone of us should be overtaken by such a calamity as riches, we should proceed at once to learn how to live just as if we were poor, because if we don’t, wo will lose our appetite, ruin our ,£tomachs, shorten our lives, spoil our children, and even go so far as to stop milking the bossies, thereby losing our chance to sit and think. Riches within themselves destroy nothing, but the indulgence which usually follows destroys everything, even including riches them, selves. But all the above we poor dairymen are escaping, “So let us put away our fears And for ail the coming years Just be glad.”