four] water supply 



off autumn leaves, to hide them under logs, or 

 spread them in the meadows for humus; and all 

 the while is the happy home of fish and salaman- 

 ders, and of crabs that walk sideways and lift ri- 

 diculous gauntlets to the man in the moon. A 

 country without brooks is always a lonesome place. 

 The New England States and the Middle States 

 are in nothing else richer than in those streams 

 that gush out of the hillsides. If you have one it is 

 for you to study, to companion, and listen to its 

 advice. I mean that man, who cannot live by 

 bread alone, cannot live by bread and water — that 

 the poetry of a country home is just as essential a 

 part of it as the gardens and the orchards. 



In the making of new homes in the country, es- 

 pecially in the West, nothing so fixes family life — 

 so settles it to a locality and creates the home feel- 

 ing, as a good well. It was about water that Eastern 

 civilization clustered and developed, and it is not 

 wholly otherwise with us. So it is that health, com- 

 fort and homefulness all unite about the deep and 

 copious well. The cost is absolutely nothing as 

 compared with the resultant blessing. As I write 

 I read of a drought in Texas. The writer says, 

 "There are few wells hereabouts; and most of the 



[79] 



