The Naturalizing of a City Man 
Editor’s Note:—The author of this narrative—begun in the December number—had refused to write the story 
of his experiences in going from business life to a farm. His objection was that the published account taken from 
his closely written diary would contain nothing of the joy and inspiration he felt in getting close to Nature, and 
would be merely a matter-of-fact list of happenings with their message lost. He finally consented to write it in his 
own way, allowing memory and imagination to lend color to those days of struggle which are now cherished 
recollections. He preferred to hide his identity under the disguise of another person, but the essential facts are 
true and full of practical information. This installment concludes the story of the successful experiment. 
TT was indeed hot, long and disheartening, that journey which 
Mantell took to the Experiment Station to see if they could 
give him any advice that would help him combat the drought. 
Through the cinder begrimed window of the car, jerked along by 
an antiquated engine, he gazed on fields of corn stunted and 
rolled up, burned down on hillsides and dry knolls. Where, on 
his former trips to the Station, he had passed over rivers, there 
were for the most part to be seen now only muddy bottoms or 
winding lines of green which stood out conspicuously enough in 
the autumnal brownness of the general landscape. 
The trip up from the depot to the Station grounds only brought 
the widespread devastation of the past few rainless weeks still 
more strikingly to his notice. He was miles and miles away from 
home, but the damage done had been as great here as there. 
The field crops on the Station grounds were looking better 
than those on most of the farms he had passed, owing to the 
constant shallow cultivation they had received. They showed 
very plainly, however, the effect of the deficiency of moisture. 
The men at the Station were, in a way, as deeply disappointed 
over the outcome of the season as any of Mantell’s neighbors. 
It was not, it is true, a matter of bread and butter with them, 
their salaries being un¬ 
affected by the size of 
the crops; but numer¬ 
ous experiments were 
under way and these 
were, of course, seri¬ 
ously interfered with. 
Yet there was one 
bright spot. The year 
before, when he had 
made the visit from 
which so much infor¬ 
mation and inspiration 
had been derived, the 
professor with whom 
he had become ac¬ 
quainted had told him 
that they were just 
about to try out a new 
system of irrigation. 
About an acre of this 
had been put in, over 
the plot where the 
vegetable and flower 
gardens were located. There had been little chance the first year 
to test it out further than to see that it worked all right, because 
it had been put in so late and because of the rains toward the end 
of the season. This season, however, when the dry spell had set 
in there had been a chance to see what it was good for practically, 
and it had done wonders. Everything within its reach flourished 
most luxuriantly — looked better, the professor said, than they 
had in any season he remembered. He was very enthusiastic, 
more so than Mantell had found him about anything before. It 
would make, he said, “a revolution in market gardening.” 
The system was, although simple, a radical change from any 
of the old methods of irrigation, which the professor kindly ran 
over for Mantell’s benefit, from the clever water-wheels and elabo¬ 
rate dam systems of the ancient Egyptians and the laborious 
swinging buckets of the Chinese, to the gigantic new dams and 
almost endless canals of our Western States. 
“As far as their use in the East is concerned,” said the pro¬ 
fessor, “all these ditch systems have several very serious draw¬ 
backs. In the first place, they must be carried out on a large 
scale; then they necessitate land either naturally or artificially 
leveled; and as the water is applied in very large quantities at a 
time, leaving the soil packed, surface cultivation must be given 
after each application. This new system can run literally up and 
down hill and is practical for a quarter of an acre, four acres or 
fourteen; and the labor of applying it is almost nothing, as a 
man can keep right on with his work of hoeing, weeding or culti¬ 
vating while attending to it.” 
While talking, they had left the main building and gone down 
to the engine house, by the shore of the large duck pond. 
“You see,” continued the professor, “that the tank up by the 
barn there did not give us either water or ‘fall’ enough to connect 
the system direct to it, so for the present we put in a larger main 
pipe line — two-inch pipe — up as far as the field where the garden 
is, and pump directly 
into the irrigating sys¬ 
tem. We are, however, 
trying to get an appro¬ 
priation from the legis¬ 
lature for an adequate 
water supply for our 
growing needs. They 
seem, however, to have 
money for almost 
everything except the 
work which is of most 
direct benefit to the 
State’s largest tax¬ 
payers, the farmers.” 
He turned on the 
gasoline, adjusted the 
oil cup, and gave the 
crank a coqple of turns. 
“Do you mean to say,” 
asked Mantell, “that 
that engine”—it was 
only two horsepower— 
“will supply you with 
water fast enough to water a patch of any size?” 
“An acre at a time, easily,” answered the professor, as he 
shifted the belt over onto the tight pulley and the pump began 
its slow, monotonous backward and forward strokes. 
The sight that awaited his curious eyes as they returned to the 
field seemed almost incredible. There was a slight breeze blow¬ 
ing — here and there in the broad fields about them it stirred up 
clouds of the powdery brown soil. The foliage, even far from 
the roadside, was covered thickly with white dust. A parching, 
searing dryness was everywhere. Everywhere except just ahead 
of them, and there, for a stretch of 400 feet, two thin walls of 
water mounted, wavering and gleaming, into the air, broke grace- 
Two long lines of pipes fitted at intervals with nozzles from which the water issued in 
tiny jets were the means of saving the onion crop 
(220) 
