SMALL NAILS.” 
known and remedied in time, it would have caused 
little inconvenience or stoppage of work ; the nail 
damaged the cylinder and chop, and the detention 
caused, in getting these repaired, was the means of 
filling the cherry-loft with ripe coffee which had to 
be pulled off and at once, whenever the machinery 
was put to rights. Had the pnlper worked properly 
from the very first, the early gatherings and pulpings 
would have been small, and no preassure on the sides 
of the receiving cistern. These, having had time ta 
swell out and consolidate, would gradually have got 
settled in position, and the nails rusted in. So the 
daily gradual increase of gathered coffee would slowly 
and steadily prepare the cistern for any after weight 
or burden it would have to undergo. Header, who- 
ever you are, look out for a small nails ; it is just 
the old Scotch proverb, “ A stitch in time saves 
nine.” Few there are, if any at all, in any position in 
life, who could not, if they chose to take the trouble, 
trace back through a long series of years, a long course 
of troubles, to their very source, till they come to the 
original, a small nail. What is your small nail ? It 
may be you will have to go back on the memories of 
twenty, forty, or fifty years ago, through a long 
series of unhappy, unfortunate, and untoward events. 
Look, as far as you can, and surely you will find the 
small nail ! In a former chapter we have likened an 
old planter to an old pulper. And so, in like manner 
now, we Avould liken the act of pulping to life itself. 
Few there are who start all right, and pulp all right, 
till the evening closes. Many are so busily engaged in 
making money, that they utterly neglect the art of 
keeping it, after it is made ; these are they who 
forgot to close the doors of their cisterns, — all that 
they earn and save runs down the back drain ; others 
again become merely money -making machines. They 
pulp away, and fill their coffers, the receiving 
cisterns, until they are chokeful, then when the pulp- 
ing of life is over, and the shadows of evening are 
lengthening, some morning the}" suddenly wake up 
to find it has all gone down the drain. The receiving 
cistern — some bank, some company, or bubble scheme 
— has swayed and burst. 
It has just dawned upon our recollection, that we 
have omitted to mention another system of drying 
coffee, which has now almost, if not altogether, gone 
out of use. It was called “ Clerihew’s Patent.” 
About the latter ^end of the Forties, Mr. Clerihew 
(now deceased) was resident manager on liahatungoda 
Estate, Upper Hewaheta. He invented a system, and 
patented it (although I think there was some after 
^liscussion, that the principle was not a new oncj 
o 
