204 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



intelligible, it is yet not that about which I care so 

 much, as to * draw aside the curtain.' The idea of 

 ploughing and digging stands like a thick blind 

 before the whole philosophy of the subject, and 

 screens the inventive mechanician from the simple 

 application of his mind to the quod est faciendum. 

 His faculties are clogged, stupefied, held in check by 

 the pestering contemplation of processes that enter 

 not necessarily into the problem to be solved, nor 

 need appear in its solution. They are unessential to 

 the matter. They became so the very instant the 

 steam-engine was discovered; a power, and the only 

 one we possess, that can be carried to the field, 

 and put into an agricultural machine like the main- 

 spring into a watch to give it independent intrinsic 

 action within itself, owing nothing to, but entirely 

 separate from, the traction and progression of the 

 implement along the field. Hitherto there is not 

 even the attempt so to apply it ; it has never had a 

 chance. Every field-implement we have, works by 

 traction like the Pedometer that ticks because the 

 wearer marches ; but with steam for our mainspring, 

 we can make the watch tick independent of the wearer. 

 When we understand that, when we have in idea and 

 in fact detached the ivork of cultivation from the 



