298 Our Farming. 



through pipe from a well 130 feet distant. I hardly need to tell 

 you that a pump was put in. our kitchen before we had one at the 

 barn. And once a year our wood shed is filled with dry stove 

 wood, not too long or too coarse. In our poorest days we never 

 burned green wood couldn't afford to do it, nor to wear out my 

 wife's patience. 



The slops from our kitchen are thrown into a large cask on 

 wheels that stands by the east porch, or west one, as may be most 

 handy. This cask the man wheels away every night and empties 

 once only in a place. This is very handy and perfectly safe. I 

 would never risk a slop drain coming into the kitchen or up by 

 the door outside, and slops thrown out of the door, always in one 

 place, could not be thought of for a moment. Slop drains are 

 usually dangerous to health. Of course, they may be trapped so 

 as to be moderately safe, but I never saw one so fixed in a coun- 

 try home. 



In this same line, a farmer should have an earth closet, where 

 the accumulations are gathered in a water-tight metal box or pail, 

 and deodorized by daily applications of dry earth. Dry muck is 

 best when one can get it readily, but any dry soil or dust will do 

 well. These accumulations can be emptied on the manure heap, 

 or scattered on the surface of the soil, and will not be unpleasant 

 to handle or endanger the purity of the drinking water or of the 

 air. Pure air, pure water and God's blessed sunshine are the best 

 preventives of disease in the world, and one would naturally sup- 

 pose that around a farmer's home they would certainly always be 

 found, that they would be much more certain to be there than in 

 the cities where homes were close together. But they are not. 

 Typhoid fever, scarlet fever and diphtheria rage in farm homes as 

 well as in our cities, and are said to be even more prevalent. 

 These are nearly always preventable with just a little care to have 

 pure air, pure water and plenty of sunshine. With a covered 

 barnyard and cement floors and a free use of land plaster in the 

 stables, and with a simple earth closet, and slops never emptied 

 but once in a place, on the surface, in the sunshine, you can have 

 pure air and pure water. On a great many old farms you cannot 

 find these now. The earth has become saturated with filth until 

 the danger point is at hand. When our farms were first settled 

 there was almost no risk of this kind, even if one was somewhat 

 careless. The earth absorbed the filth. After fifty or more years 

 of this it simply cannot hold any more on many farms, and serious 

 danger is right close by, and no one can tell how soon it may take 

 away one or more loved ones. It is no act of the L,ord, either, 

 no dispensation of Providence, but just the accumulated filth 

 about your places which poisons the drinking w r ater, and, per- 

 haps, the air. Given a flat location and manure of various kinds 

 leaching into the earth for many years, from stables, yards, privy 

 vaults, etc., and a well of water from which the family drink, 



