164 ^ v SPRING. 



pen toell. 



IT is none of my business, but I feel a twinge 

 of indignation when, as is frequently the case, I 

 meet with a pump-maker. His long wagon, 

 with its load of wooden tubes and other fixtures 

 of the latest patterns of simple or compound 

 pumps, is a positive eyesore ; for, labor-saving as 

 this may all be, it means, nevertheless, the oblit- 

 eration of the open well, and for the old windlass, 

 or still older sweep, a hideously painted post of 

 wood or iron. He who has -drunk, at midday in 

 July, from an old oaken bucket, knows how great 

 a loss one surfers by the change. Not even Haw- 

 thorne's rills from the town pump can quite recon- 

 cile one. Perhaps it is a fool's errand, but I have 

 walked a mile out of my way, scores of times, 

 for no other purpose than the pleasure of hear- 

 ing the bucket splash in the waters of a deep well 

 and to draw it up, by means of the well-poised 

 sweep, " dripping with coolness." 



It may be fancy, but even modern well-diggers 

 are a different and prosy folk compared with the 

 old masters of the art for art it was, they held, 

 to locate with the divining-rod just where the 

 never-failing spring was " bubbling " far beneath 

 their feet. Was a well to be dug ? Then Ezek 

 Sureshot must do the work ; and not until years 



