COMBINATION AND COMMINUTION. 51 



make an affirmative, perhaps two bad soils might 

 make one good one, and three bad soils, a better 

 still, and four bad ones the best of all! and when 

 I saw the old drainer throwing out those lumps 

 of many-colored Clay, and Sand, and Gravel, and 

 Peat, it was really too much for me. The mono- 

 mania was irresistible ; and the old fellow must 

 have known it ; for at the very moment when the 

 paroxysm was at its height just when the extrav- 

 agant thought was flashing across me that though 

 every body declared nem. con. that it was bad, 

 SOME ONE had pronounced it GOOD just at that 

 very moment of weak hallucination, the old Lucifer, 

 smacking his lips in an odd way of his own, looked 

 up temptingly in my face, with his question, "A 

 queer lot, Sir! What shall I do loitk it?" 



Blue and red, yellow and gray, white and black, 

 stiff and loose, gritty and waxy, cohesive and re- 

 pellent, soft and hard there it lay before my eyes, 

 my precious subsoil in all its Protean variety of 

 color, texture, and consistency ; there, lay the ras- 

 cally substratum that had pulled down strong men, 

 one after another, who had tried to grow crops over 

 it, exposed at last and brought to daylight like an 

 unearthed fox ; there it lay, dripping away its 

 long pent-up moisture down the narrow channel 



