A "PRACTICAL" BEGINNING. 35 



be had commenced operations, I found him hard at 

 work cutting a drain, about eighteen inches deep, 

 laying in the tiles one l>y one, and filling the earth 

 in over them as he went ! 



The field I had begun upon was very large, and 

 very flat ; and in order to increase artificially the 

 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. 



" Pve leen a-draining this forty year and 

 more / ought to know summut about 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 ? " &c., &c. 



Old as Adam old as Adam was the whole dia- 

 logue it is idle to go through it Conceit versus 

 Prejudice the ignorance of the young against the 

 ignorance of the old the tiling that has been, and 

 will be, as long as " the sun and moon endureth." 

 It ended as I have said. 



