30 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



having a dry surface two inches deep, leaving the 

 furrow, and about a yard on each side of it, as the 

 perpetual channel or bed for water or ice in the 

 winter, and baked sterility in the summer; that if 

 anybody dares to mention to you anything about that 

 mysterious abomination called the THE SUBSOIL, you 

 are to screw up your mouth, shake your head and say 

 ' It won't do to bring up that nasty stuff!' 

 ' But don't Gardeners do it sometimes ?' I one day 

 ventured to ask, with child-like simplicity, in reply to 

 the established doctrine. 



'That's a different thing: Gardeners aren't "prac- 

 tical farmers.'" 



' But don't THE ROOTS OF PLANTS GROW DOWNWARDS 



in a Field, as well as in a Garden ?' 



I don't know how it was, but that provoking ques- 

 tion always brought the conversation to an abrupt 

 close. I never could get beyond it. It stuck in my 

 own throat and everybody's else, like Macbeth's Amen. 

 Left alone at last to my own ignorance, I dropped 

 deeper and deeper, day after day, into a state of con- 

 firmed Theory. I got strange notions into my head, 

 that, as two negatives make an affirmative, perhaps 

 two bad soils might make one good one, and three 

 bad soils, a better still, and four bad ones the best of 



