Thoughts of a Farmer, XI. Scouring

Thoughts of a Farmer. BY DR. JOSEPH M. TANNER. XL— Scouring. Last year had in its springtime a long, rainy season. It was difficult to keep implements exposed to the rain from rusting. The plow, which it was my lot to use, gave me considerable difficulty at the outset, because, in the language of the farmer, it would not scour. Every time there was a change in the consistency of the soil, or where clay or gumbo was in excess, the particles would adhere to the surface of the plow until it was like dragging a log of wood beneath the surface of the land. The horses often had put upon them almost a double burden. Frequent stops were necessary to clear the attaching soil, polish the blade of the plow and apply a little oil. These repeated processes in time brought the implement into a good, servicable condition, and the horses went along without excessive burden, and rolled the soil over as the farmer delights to see it turned. The condition of that plow contains some analogy to the affairs of human life. Did you ever see people to whom every disagreeable little thing will cling, and these little things accumulate until they become a load almost too heavy to draw? Like the plow, they cease to do good work by turning over the soil and exposing it to the air and to sunshine. Persons who thus have some sort of affinity for unpleasant things, for the accumulation of matter foreign to their needs, experience a great deal of trouble in life. Their burdens are excessively heavy. What they really need is a bright polish that will make the disagreeable things of life pass by them without gluing themselves fast to their natures.

THOUGHTS OF A FARMER. 787 We all know the value of one's ability to see, hear and feel minutely the things that are going on about one. These senses are ordained of God for our helpfulness and guidance. On the other hand, it is well to be able to forget. Sometimes we find it quite necessary to our happiness in life to forget the distasteful experiences to which we are all more or less subject. It is also necessary sometimes to have ears and hear not, to have eyes and see not. Many things happen about us to which we ought to be wholly oblivious, if we do not wish to sense their discomfort and annoyance. The senses and attributes with which we have been endowed are divinely appointed agencies by which we ought to discriminate in life between that which is useful and that which is harmful. The soil of human existence, through which day after day we are compelled to plow our way, has in it sticky and foreign substances which adhere whenever possible to the spirit of our life and weigh down our feelings until their burdens make us unhappy. There are some who take trifles too seriously, who fail to discriminate between that which is important and that which is non-essential to their welfare. It is not intended that we should carry the various burdens of life all the way across the fields of our existence. When in the course of our daily toils we turn over, like the plow, the soil that is to bear fruit, we leave it in its divinely appointed place to gather properties from the sunshine and the air through which it is made productive. There are many difficulties in life through which we must plow, and, like the soil, they disintegrate in sunshine; and though apparently useless when going through them, they turn to excellent advantage in an open atmosphere. As we look back upon them we see them crumbling to pieces. If we carry them along with us they grow, like the rolling snow, until they become large, and we sink beneath the burden of their weight. With the plow one of the first requisites is that it should scour well, so in life it is absolutely necessary that there be about us some polished surface over which disagreeable and useless things may glide with ease. Alberta, Canada.