THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 129 



ticular delight in the dry land. But I could see all the 

 while, that he was getting up to a new effort, sideways, 

 as Jake Frink says. I loaned him the paper, and found he 

 always had some inquiries to make about draining, how 

 they made tiles, how the water got into them, how deep 

 they had to be laid, and how they worked. I have fre 

 quently found him down at my horse-pond lot, running 

 his cane into the ends of the tiles, where they empty into 

 the ditch, as if to make sure that it was real water that 

 was discharging from the hole. He evidently thought 

 there must be some trick about it, that the water could 

 not get into tiles after they were laid. But there was 

 proof in that horse-pond lot that he could not very well 

 get away from. 



I have been studying that lot some myself, this winter. 

 It is only two seasons since the tiles were laid there, and 

 you would be surprised to see what a change the surface 

 of the land has undergone. The light bluish clay that I 

 threw out from the bottoms of the drains and spread 

 around upon the surface, has all crumbled to pieces, and 

 got to be about as dark as the rest of the soil. I have 

 noticed all along over the drains, and for a considerable 

 distance upon each side, the ground becomes dry very soon 

 after a rain, and little cracks are visible.. The land used 

 to be so full of water that no air got into it, from Novem 

 ber to May. Now the air follows every rain, and every 

 freezing and thawing disturbs the whole mass of the soil 

 several inches deep. The mechanical improvement of the 

 soil seems to go on quite as rapidly in the winter as in the 

 summer. Jack Frost, I guess, is about as good a friend 

 as the farmer has, if he would only give him a chance to 

 work. The tiles make a path for him, and he uses up the 

 coarse lumps and clods a little better than any harrow I 

 ever tried. 



Uncle Jothnm has doubtless seen these things, though 

 he has said nothing, and would have probably declared 



