154: HOW TO GET A FAKM, 



lunacy ; they went by wagging their heads, and saying 

 * Aha! and one and all said he was a most consummate ass 

 to put crockery under ground and bury his money so fruit 

 lessly. Poor Mr. Johnston ! he says he really felt ashamed 

 of himself for trying the new plan, and when people riding 

 past the house would shout at him, and make contemptuous 

 signs, he was sore-hearted, and almost ready to conceal his 

 crime. BUT WHAT WAS THE RESULT ? Why this : that 

 land which previously was sodden with water and utterly 

 unfruitful, in one season was covered with luxuriant crops, 

 and the jeering skeptics were utterly confounded ; that in 

 two crops all his outlay for tiles and labor was repaid, and 

 he could start afresh and drain more land ; that the profit 

 was so manifest as to induce him to extend his operations 

 each succeeding year, and so go on until 1856, when his 

 labor was finished, after having laid 210,000 tiles, or more 

 than fifty miles in length ! And the fame of this individual 

 success going forth, one and another duplicated his experi 

 ment, and were rewarded according to their deserts. 



&quot; It was not long after the manufacture of the first lot of 

 tiles that a machine was contrived which would make them 

 quite as well and faster ; and by its aid they were afforded 

 at quite as low a price as after an English machine was im 

 ported. The horse-shoe tile has been used by Mr. Johnston 

 almost exclusively, for the reason that they were the only 

 kind to be procured at first, and on his hard subsoil, finding 

 them to do as well as he could wish, he has not cared to 

 make new experiments. He has drains that have been in 

 function for more than twenty years without needing re 

 pair, and are apparently as efficient now as they were when 

 first laid. In soft land, pipe or sole tiles would be prefer 

 able, or if horse-shoe were used, they should be placed on 

 strips of rough board, to prevent them sinking into the 

 trench bottom, or being thrown out of the regular fall by 



