THE " POWERS" THAT BE. 191 



" It has lain like a stubborn brute that would n't 

 rise, for work or play, ever since I have known it. 

 It won't know itself next year ! It has never borne 

 Turnip or Barley, since the Flood which, in fact, 

 it has never recovered, I suppose, till the draining 

 tools have bled it in this way. How little one can 

 say what a soil is, till it is drained ! " 



" It does one's heart good to look at it now, how r 

 ever," replied Mr. Greening; "doesn't it make you 

 happy-like to see this sort of change, and feel that 

 you have done it? It does me." 



"So happy, that at the end of a winter's day of 

 draining-work I have spent hours of delicious idle 

 reverie, with the Lamp wasting beside me as I sat 

 alone, dreaming the day's work over again ; seeing, 

 yet with closed eyes, the long pent-up poison oozing 

 away down its narrow channels poison no longer! 

 and thinking of the future showers that will perco- 

 late and filter through the loosened soil and subsoil 

 three or four feet deep, like some freed and glad- 

 dened thing doing its bounteous Maker's bidding! 



our populous districts, than to purchase the apparently 

 "worthless" clayn that have been thrown by, after long-neg- 

 lected cultivation. Give them a thorough draining, and by 

 such means, almost alone, restore them to their original 

 fertility and productiveness ED. 



