228 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FAKM. 



when we have occasion to address the wearers by 

 name. "Talking makes a ready man, reading an 

 exact man," says the old proverb. That laying out 

 of a subject in detail which talking requires, clothing 

 it in simple and intelligible language, yet illustrated 

 with analogies and metaphor, suited to the indi- 

 vidual addressed, is an exercise in itself susceptible 

 of such improvement that one is sometimes tempted 

 to ask, whether language owes more to thought, or 

 thought to language. 



But this was not all. In the conversations that 

 ensued with Mr. Greening, derived from my origi- 

 nal promise to him to put this question of Steam- 

 cultivation into plain English, I soon felt that it is one 

 thing to see a matter as plain as a pike-staff before 

 your own eyes, and to put it into language very 

 simple to your own mind prepared to understand it, 

 and a very different thing to make it intelligible to 

 those who have never given any express attention to 

 it before. For the sake of the importance of the 

 subject, I will try to restate the whole question ; 

 dropping, for the purpose of continuity, the dialogue 

 form in which the subject was by frequent and useful 

 objections on his part made to develop itself. 



Before the discovery of Steam-power, and its 

 application to machinery, there was no sucJi thing 



