A CONVERT, AND A HERETIC. 25 



vanished, with a clap of thunder, from before the 

 eyes of my catechist, I do not think his face would 

 have assumed a greater expression of resourceless and 

 complete astonishment than followed this extraordi- 

 nary announcement of the reason for a farming ope- 

 ration. Vainly had I attempted to explain in former 

 conversations that when a field is effectually drained, 

 the furrows are underground, three feet deep; and 

 that one of the great objects of breaking the subsoil 

 is to enable the water to go where it was intended to 

 go, DOWNWARDS ; that every unevenness of the surface 

 was a source of deviation, and therefore of unequal 

 distribution, of that rich food that falls from Heaven, 

 Oxygen and Hydrogen, commonly called WATER : 

 that on the best land farmed in the best way, furrows 

 are avoided as a nuisance and a loss, except as a mark 

 for measure- work ; and that the object of draining 

 and subsoiling was as the object of all Art is to 

 imitate NATURE in her most perfect examples. 



The paradox of yesterday is the truism of to-day. 

 Gas-lamps light up towns and Great -Westerns cross 

 the Atlantic, though Davy laughed at the one and 

 Lardner at the other. And the principle of the Deep 

 drain, which ten years ago the timid theorist dared 

 not assert, for its wild and visionary seeming, is now 



