74: CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FAEM. 



Fifty acres of CLAY SUBSOIL? Would you not have 

 regarded such a means of retaining some of the 

 moisture given by the clouds, almost as a special 

 providence!* Too much water too much ANY 

 THING, however good is always an inconvenience : 

 but which were best too much or none at all f Now 

 this is precisely the thought that used to ocur to 

 me (marked " private ") whenever some visitatorial, 

 geological, new-and-improved-agricultural stranger 

 bestowed an overdose of sublime pity upon the 

 affliction of clay that lay underneath my Flat Farm. 

 " A pretty business you would have made of it," I 

 used to think as I heard them glorifying the merits 

 of a free subsoil "if you had had the ordering of 

 it! Heaven be thanked, a Wiser Hand than yours 

 has had the management of these things, and has, 

 for the most part, confined the sandy subsoils to the 



* "Leveled of Alps and Andes, without its Valleys and 



Ravines, 

 How dull the face of earth, unfeatured of both beauty and 



utility i 

 Praise God, creature of earth, for the mercies linked with 



secresy : 

 Praise God, his hosts on high, for the mysteries that make all 



joy-" 



[M. F. Tupper. "Proverbial Philosophy."] 



