I want to talk today to the boys on the farm, and the old gray-haired
boys who were raised on the farm. I think the old boys will appreciate my
talk the most because they have had the experience I shall talk about.
The farm boy nowadays knows nothing of the old experience that used to
come to us older farm boys who were obliged to go barefooted the greater
part of the summer and autumn. Say, you old gray-headed farm hand, do you
remember how you used to chase the cows up on a cold, frosty morning, and
use the warm spot to warm your half-frozen feet? I do. Often when obliged
to go to the fields for the cows on a frosty October morning I would
chase the cows up and then stand in the warm spot to thaw out my red feet.
Well, that game has been reversed on me a hundred times since that day,
and I have been chased up from my bed that others might warm their feet
at my expense. Once in particular I owned, or thought I owned, a tract of
mountain land. I was saving the timber for a future day. It was all the
property I had in the world. The man who owned the tract adjoining mine
sold it to my neighbor. This neighbor was an amateur surveyor, and spent
much time running old lines through the woods. I thought it was for the
practice he was getting out of the work, but I soon learned differently.
He had discovered an old line running through the centre of my tract
of mountain land. It was two years older than the line between his new
possessions and my land. He jumped the tract and said that all above the
old line he found was his—that it belonged to the tract he had purchased.
He began at once to cut down the timber I had been saving for a future
day, and laughed at me when I protested and told him I had bought the
land in good faith, and it belonged to me.
I employed a surveyor, who counted the growths of the trees since the
blazes were made, and he agreed with my surveying neighbor that he was
right—the line to which he claimed was two years older than the line to
which I had purchased land. I was obliged to get up and let him warm his
feet in the one spot on earth I had warmed.
It all came back to me how I used to chase the cows up to warm my bare
feet. It wasn’t exactly bread coming back on the water, but it was the
cold coming back to my feet. I was taken with cold feet and gave up the
land.
Since then I learned that the old line that served so well to swindle
me out of my mountain land was an old township line, and had nothing to
do with dividing the tracts of privately owned land. Did my surveying
neighbor know this to be a fact at the time? I fear he did, for he had
previously gone over that same township line from the starting point at
the river, and had learned the truth about the line through the woods.
With this knowledge he chased me out of my warm spot and proceeded to
warm his feet.
Strange to say, we are friends today. I wouldn’t do him an injury for any
price, and I don’t think he would injure me—any more than to chase me
out of a warm spot again, and warm his feet at my expense; for this seems
to be the game of life with most business people. Some of them prosper
and some of them do not. My neighbor has gained but little. He took all I
had in the world, but it didn’t prosper in his hands. I would not trade
positions or future prospects with him today.
It doesn’t always pay to chase a man up to get possession of the warm
spot he occupied.
It didn’t pay me at all when I used to chase the cows up for the same
purpose. The intermittent moments of cold and warm feet made the cold
feel all the more chilly when I left the warm spot and stepped into the
frost-laden grass.
No doubt my neighbor realizes the same truth now. He would be far happier
if he had never wronged me—if he had never chased me up to get possession
of the spot I had warmed. We all feel that way, dear readers, no odds
how hard we try to hide the fact from the world. We are far happier
in occupying only the small spot we have warmed ourselves; for it is
not natural to treat human beings the same as we sometimes treat the
inoffensive cows.