NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XIl 739 
that night and by morning they were burned out so I could commence, 
by evening I had it finished in fine shape, and it cost exactly fifteen 
dollars. It is there as it was the day I put it in. 
Near this place was a forty rod hill, sideling, rough, and in the spring 
it was sprouty; there were rails and poles showing that people kept ask- 
ing how I was going to fix it, and I told them I didn't know just yet. 
They said men who had tried to fix it had upset the grader, and could do 
nothing with it. I got there in the evening about four o'clock, with plow 
and three scrapers, commenced plowing on the upper side about four feet 
wide, and let the scrapers throw it over. I got the ditch about two feet 
deep, and took only about four hours to do it. A short time after, when 
I was running the grader I smoothed it up and made a fine grade of it, 
and left it in fine shape. It has had no work since to speak of, and it 
was in fine shape until the last year it is ditching out some and will soon 
be in bad shape, so it will have to be doctored all over again, when if a 
little bit of dragging had been done it would have gotten better instead 
of going to the bad. Some people work hills too wide. A man near 
here spent thirty dollars on a hill. He worked it about thirty-five feet 
wide, cut a ditch to run the water from the road into a man's pasture, 
and he left the hill almost flat. The next the water started down the 
middle of the road, and there was two ditches a foot deep, and you could 
hardly get up the hill. Four men wanted to donate enough work to fix 
two miles of the road and this hill was included. They hired me to run 
the grader. I said, "How do you want the hill fixed?" and they said 
to do it the way I wanted to. I said, "I will grade it about twenty-two 
feet wide," as I had to start narrow to get the middle full. I said to 
them, "you must not let the ditches take the hill, but keep moving them 
over until they get over to the ditches that cost the other man thirty 
dollars." They did as I said and the hill has been in fine shape until 
the last year; it hasn't been dragged, and is beginning to get a little 
rough. It only cost us a few hours' work. 
Dragging now has a two-fold purpose. One is to keep the roads 
smooth and hard, the other is to throw up a grade. For the first, go one 
round in the center of the road when it is just dry enough so it will 
pack, and not stick to the drag. But to grade a road you must have it 
dry enough so you can move the dirt. 
In the spring, as soon as the road is dry, I go one round the outside of 
the road, about an inch of the top is mellow and moves very easily. 
Then I wait until it mellows again, which it will do as soon as it rains, 
and dries, and I go another round in the same place, and drag this to the 
center. That way you save one round, as you can move as much as you 
can get from the outside in two or three rounds, and by not dragging 
quite all of this dirt away you can leave a shoulder and have the road 
hipped. Keep this up whenever the road is slacked or mellow and you 
will have a beautiful road, and no weeds at the side of the road. If you 
move all the dirt that is run in from the side of the road it will have 
straight sides and look like a house roof, and when it is slick, horses will 
slip and slide, and it worries them to get along. Along a hill road where 
the rain makes ditches, by dragging in the ditches it is easy to keep the 
road in a nice circle or hip shape. When the center gets high enough 
