A CONVERT, AND A HERETIC. 4:5 



vanished, with a clap of thunder, from before the 

 eyes of my catechist, I do not think his face would 

 have assumed a greater expression of resourceless 

 and complete astonishment than followed this extra- 

 ordinary announcement of the reason for a farming 

 operation. Vainly had I attempted to explain in 

 former conversations that when a field is effectually 

 drained, the furrows are underground, three feet 

 deep ; and that one of the great objects of breaking 

 the subsoil is to enable the water to go where it was 

 intended to go, DOWNWARD ; that every unevenness 

 of the surface was a source of deviation, and there- 

 fore of unequal distribution, of that rich food that 

 falls from Heaven, Oxygen and Hydrogen, com- 

 monly called WATER ; that on the best land farmed 

 in the best way, furrows are avoided as a nuisance 

 and a loss, except as a mark for measure-work ; and 

 that the object of draining and subsoiling was as 

 the object of all Art is to imitate NATURE in her 

 most perfect examples. 



The paradox of yesterday is the truism of to-day. 

 Gas-lamps light up towns, and Great-Westerns cross 

 the Atlantic, though Davy laughed at the one and 

 Lardner at the other. And the principle of the Deep 

 drain, which ten years ago the timid theorist dared 

 not assert, for its wild and visionary seeming, is now 



