1857.] Chronicles of a Clay Farm. 393 



stimulate further exploration, and his plow be set a couple of inches 

 deeper his ears might presently be regaled with a sound as of a heavy. 

 laden cart dragging over a newly-graveled road ; and after turning 

 up a variety of conglomerates, as compacted as the bed of an old 

 Koman causeway, and as many-colored as Harlequin's coat, the stress 

 of the pull would suddenly be eased and the plow be heard swimming 

 whisperingly through a bed of wet sand ; and just as the filler-horse 

 was congratulating himself that it was all plain sailing now bang 

 goes a trace or spreader and the plow comes to a stand-still, just re- 

 vealing at the share-point the bruised side of a quartz-pebble, as big 

 as a foot-ball, grinning at you from its tight nook in the bed of the 

 furrow.* 



Have I described enough ? or shall I add to this subsoil sketch a 

 faint and feeble idea of the surface some time about the month of 

 February (surnamed " fill-dyke" not without reason), and endeavor 

 to paint the hopeless, currentless, resourceless and pitiable condition 

 of water whose unhappy fate has fallen or melted upon fields as flat 

 as a billiard table, and without even a " pocket" to run into for 

 escape or concealment? There it would stand, day after day, and 

 week after week, and month after month, shining along the serpen- 

 tine furrows as if it never, never, never would go again 1 And the 

 only wonder was when or how, or by what bold amphibious being the 

 ridges had ever been raised which it intersected, like a sample series 

 of Dutch canals and embankments. 



This was my Farm : 250 statute acres! 



" Why did you tahe it?" 



I didn't. It took me. That " mysterious lady" who is painted 

 with a bandage on her eyes (but she can see as well as you or I), 

 made it, with a pat on the back, my property, and shortly afterward? 

 with a slap in the face, my " occupation." It had been performing 

 for a series of years a sort of " geometrical progression" — downward- 

 Each incoming tenant took it at about half the previous rent ; dabbled 



* A graphic description of what many a youna; farmer may enconnter in his first 

 efforts at subduiiis; a naturally forbiddiuc; soil. Where, however, the elements composing 

 it are geologically good, although lying incongruously beneath the surface, the unprom- 

 ising aspect of the newly -turned earth should be no obstacle to his perseverance. Some 

 of the most productive farms within our knowledge have been reclaimed from lands, 

 time out of mind, considered even by good cultivators worthless and eventually brought 

 into cultivation through the aid of a scientific analysis determining their composition 

 and the application of improved methods of draining, to thi-ow them into proper condi- 

 .tion for the plow. 



