THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 257 



am told by an ingenious and pleasant clergyman (a well- 

 known inventor) that if I keep a pan of water under the 

 fire-bars, not only will it tend to the preservation of the 

 iron, but by some wonderful resolution of gases it will 

 make the coal last at least double the time it would 

 otherwise have done under ordinary circumstances. I 

 forget how many gallons of water he uses daily under 

 his own study fire. He mentioned also a trial he made 

 with Dorsetshire shale or some such stuff, which is very 

 difficult to burn at all. How that he and a friend, by 

 help of this water dodge, managed to set a piece on fire 

 which after ignition for no less than thirty-six hours, 

 had yet left in it enough of oil to allow of their writing 

 their names with it, after cooling, on a white surface. 

 Very well; then I can't roast my potatoes in the ash-pit, 

 that's poz. ; so I shall just rake out a few, and do it out- 

 side, being wilful as a woman. This dear delightful 

 little machine, it seems to have been a good deal knocked 

 about ; there's a brass neckband here and a screw there 

 all wrong, and this is broken, and that won't work, and 

 the days are terribly foggy and short. I hope I shall 

 not be ruined before it is finished putting up, and that 

 anyhow it won't serve me as the sofa did its buyer, w^ho 

 was of an uxorious cast of mind. When it came home to 

 the thankful spouse, why it made the carpet look quite 

 dull, and then the new carpet made the chairs shabby, 

 and the new chairs quite spoilt the cabinet, and so on, 

 until positively this handsome present of a sofa cost its 

 benighted purchaser two thousand pounds. To apply 

 the moral : Why, if I am first to buy a new boiler, and 

 then to fit up a new house for it, and then to get a mill 

 and an improved chaff-cutter, and so on to everlasting, 

 why I shall be wishing the engine altogether at Jericho 



