88 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



thought is a well-drained Field ! A portion, a small 

 yet measurable portion of Nature's reality, brought 

 by the hand of man from sterility to fruitfulness 

 from its first and incomplete existence to its in- 

 tended and developed state. What a thought to 

 cheer and lighten the dull November fog that hun- 

 dreds and thousands of acres in this moist England 

 of ours, which once began their annual saturation 

 with the Autumn rains, and lay in barren quagmire 

 the livelong Winter through, unwakenable from the 

 clammy trance of their yearly death even by the 

 cheerful voice and breath of coming Spring, are 

 now gently transmitting through their porous tex- 

 ture, the healthful rain that feeds what it once 

 poisoned ; and that as every shower ceases, then 

 comes a rich after-gift of atmospheric air following 

 in a thousand sinuosities the threadlike channels 

 down which the rain, like a pioneer, has found and 

 led the way through the soil, to the very drain, three 

 or four feet below the surface. What a thought is 

 this, to those who know it, and have earned its 

 pleasure ! 



Nature abhors a vacuum. True, most true, O 

 philosophic chemist ! Where the drop has once dis- 

 appeared through the soil, it has dragged the air 

 after it, and with the air, its burthen of medicament, 



