438 Chronicles of a Clay Farm. [October, 



furtlier on, and again, at the sanie intervals, until tliey reacli tlie 

 otlier end of the meadow, and come plump upon the banks of a 

 marshy pool some six acres in extent. On attaining this point the 

 telescope is suddenly shut up with a triumphant snap ; its three 

 leo-s jump into one ; the dripping, shivering boy receives a tremen- 

 dous, involuntary thwack on the back, and A fall of nine feet is 

 declared — like a "Dividend of ten per cent, and a Balance over to 

 go on with!" 



Oh you primeval Carp, Pike^ and Eels! You little thought, on 

 that day, how deadly a fishing-rod, marked and measured inch by 

 inch, threw its shadow across your ancient domain ;. little did your 

 believed security dream of so new a monster, the angler iijpon three 

 legs, that had measured the altitude of your downfall and caught 

 you all, if not upon one, upon two cross hah-s. 



Old Fish or a New Farm ? Snipes or Swede-turnips ? Which 

 "was it to be ? There stood but this question between the will and 

 the way to let the Dry Land appear. And who knows what Saurian 

 monstrosities of a primeval age might be brought into daylight 

 when this stagnation of waters was let loose, which had dammed up 

 the moisture of so many broad acres from time immemorial ? since, 

 little raised above the high-water-mark of this pool, lay the subsoil 

 of the whole farm beyond and around it; and the lowest point of 

 this meadow was the lowest point of all. 



CHAPTER III. — A "practical" BEGINNING. 



It was urged by Mr. Brunel, as a justification for more attention 

 and expense in the laying of the rails of the Great Western Road 

 between London and Bristol tlian had been ever thought of upon 

 previously construsted lines, that all the embankments and cuttings, 

 and earth-works and Stations, and Law and Parliamentary expenses, 

 in fact, the whole of the outlay encountered in the formation of 

 a railway had for its main and ultimate object a perfectly smooth 

 and level line of rail ; that to turn stingy at this point, just when 

 you had arrived at the great ultimatum of the whole proceedings, 

 viz : the Iron Wheel-track — was a sort of saving which evinced a 

 want of true perception of the great object of all the labor that had 

 preceded it. It may seem curious to our experiences, in these days, 

 that such a doctrine could ever have needed to be enforced by argu- 

 ment; yet no one will deem it wonderful who has personally 

 witnessed the unaccountable and over new difficulty of getting 



