FOUR] WATER SUPPLY 
off autumn leaves, to hide them under logs, or 
spread them in the meadows for humus; and all 
the while is the happy home of fish and salaman- 
ders, and of crabs that walk sideways and lift ri- 
diculous gauntlets to the man in the moon. A 
country without brooks is always a lonesome place. 
The New England States and the Middle States 
are in nothing else richer than in those streams 
that gush out of the hillsides. If you have one it is 
for you to study, to companion, and listen to its 
advice. I mean that man, who cannot live by 
bread alone, cannot live by bread and water — that 
the poetry of a country home is just as essential a 
part of it as the gardens and the orchards. 
In the making of new homes in the country, es- 
pecially in the West, nothing so fixes family life — 
so settles it to a locality and creates the home feel- 
ing, as agood well. It was about water that Eastern 
civilization clustered and developed, and it is not 
wholly otherwise with us. So it is that health, com- 
fort and homefulness all unite about the deep and 
copious well. The cost is absolutely nothing as 
compared with the resultant blessing. As I write 
I read of a drought in Texas. The writer says, 
«There are few wells hereabouts; and most of the 
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