440 Chronicles of a Clay Farm. [October, 



order to increase artificially tlic fall, I had calculated so as to make 

 the drain eighteen inches deeper at the mouth than at the tail. I 

 might as well have calculated the distance of a telescopic star. 



" Tve heen a-draining this forty year and more — / oiigld to Jcnoxo 

 summut ahout it !" 



Need I tell you who said this ? or give you the whole of the 

 colloquy to which it furnished the epilogue ? 



I had begun something in this way — " Why, my good friend! 

 •what on earth are you about? Did n't I tell you to lay the drain 

 open from bottom to top, and that not a tile was to be put in till 

 I had seen it, and tried the levels?" etc., etc. 



(Old as Adam — old as Adam was the whole dialogue — it is idle 

 to go through it — Conceit te?-s«s Prejudice — the ignorance of the 

 young against the ignorance of the old — the thing that has been, 

 and will be, as long as •' the sun and moon endureth.'' It ended as 

 I have said.) 



" I've been a-draining this forty years and more — I ought to 

 know summut about it!" 



Here was a staggerer. Among all my calculations to think that 

 I should never have calculated on this ! I had seen the commander 

 of a noble steamer, with one parenthetical-looking point of his fore- 

 finger (caught in an instant by the helmsman), veer round a ship 

 of a thousand tons burden ; I had seen the mill-owner, with half 

 a nod to his foreman, stop in an instant the hurly-burly of a thou- 

 sand wheels while he explained to me, in comparative quiet, some 

 little matter of new invention in the carding of the rough wool, or 

 the rounding and hardening of the finished Twist. I had seen 

 enough of the empire of Mind over Matter in many forms and 

 shapes, by sea and land, to make me the devoutest of believers in 

 modern miracle. Under the quiet seductive brightness of the mid- 

 night lamp, I had reveled in the mysteries of Number and of Form ; 

 and in the working realities of daylight, I had seen and stood wit- 

 ness to the application of those apparent mysteries to the most 

 beautifully simple processes in the production of ordinary and uni- 

 versal articles of human want. It had furnished me no new or 

 difficult gratification to level and calculate to an inch, the amount 

 of Fall to be obtained upon a field, which, without this precaution, 

 might indeed be called, as it had been called, undrainable; and here 

 I was, fairly planted at the first onset. Every inch of depth was 

 of real value at the mouth of so long a line of drain. " Three feet 



