Forest City Courier, Nov. 9, 1941

Comes November, and all about us the loveliness of fall, that season between summer and winter, our favorite of all. Perhaps that sentence has more rhyme than reason. Anyway we made up that rhyming part without any help, and any similarity to any great poem written by any great poet is accidental! But, in our opinion, nature never did a better job with the trees than when she painted the leaves all colors. To see them in their varying aspects through the seasons; putting forth new leaves in spring and summer, stripping them bare for the winter, or painting their leaves with brilliant colors for the autumn. We rather think we will take the colors. So if you appreciate this particular kind of beauty, take a look at the glory of the woods before the trees lapse into their winter sleep.

*   *   *

We came across this is a newspaper the other day: “Why do people say ‘as mad as a wet hen’? A wet hen is about the meekest, lowliest, disconsolate and dejected creature on earth. A wet hen hasn’t a lick of spunk.” Well, we hadn’t up to this time taken that little expression apart and analyzed it, but since reading that it looks reasonable that if we have just cause to get mad, maybe we should get a few degrees madder than a wet hen. And if we are one of those “slow to anger” persons, we should at least get as mad as a wet hen to be mad at all.

*   *   *

It has always interested and amazed us to read about the superiority of geniuses. They say Carlyle, Dickens and Ruskin were reading classical literature at four, another person read “The Arabian Knights” before he was five. Beethoven and Schubert were composing music before they could reach the foot petals but sons like these are outside the law of averages. Somewhere, somehow, everybody who intends to amount to something in this world must get ready, and schools are the best answer we have learned to make, so far, to the problem of getting ready. Another kind of genius was little Johnny who walked into the school room after the class had begun. The teacher asked why he was late, and he replied, “Because the bell rang before I got here.” Now it would take a genius to think up an answer like that. But every normal child is a genius, or something of a genius. Ask his mother!

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Courier. Copyright owned by The Daily Courier.