The Abandoned Farmers: His Humorous Account of a Retreat from the City to the FarmCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
The Abandoned Farmers: His Humorous Account of a Retreat from the City to the Farm
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Farms -- Recreational use -- United States -- Fiction; Humorous stories
To me human nature presents a subject for constant study. For a thing so
widely distributed as it is, I regard it as one of the most interesting
things there are anywhere. It seems to me one of the chief peculiarities
of human nature is that it divides all civilized mankind into two
special groups--those who think they could run any newspaper better than
the man who is trying to run it, and those who think they could run any
hotel better than the man who is hanging on as manager or proprietor
of it. There are subdivisional classifications of course--for example,
women who think they can tell any other woman how to bring up her
children without spoiling them to death, and women who are absolutely
sure no woman on earth can tell them anything about the right way to
bring up their own children; which two groupings include practically all
women. And I have yet to meet the man who did not believe that he was
a good judge of either horses, diamonds, wines, women, salad dressings,
antique furniture, Oriental rugs or the value of real estate. And
finally all of these, regardless of sex and regardless, too, of previous
experience in the line, know better how a house intended for living
purposes should be designed and arranged than the individuals who are
paying the bills and who expect to tenant the house as a home when it is
done. By the same token--or by the inverse ratio of the same token--the
persons who are building the house invariably begin to have doubts and
misgivings regarding the worth of their own pet notions in regard to the
said house the moment some outsider offers a counter argument. I do
not know why this last should be so, but it is. It merely is one of the
inexplicable phases of the common phenomenon called human nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account