strawberries. Mr. Marsh, on the Longmeadow Farm, has offered to give me
some plants. I'll do the corn stunt; aren't you going to, Pete?"

"Of course, that was understood, and Philip will have his corn at
grandfather's too, for a city backyard is no place for corn."

"Now, Albert, you may talk for both of us," said Jay.

"Our land has to be drained, but it is not exactly the same proposition
that George has. Water stands on our land. We had thought of putting a
drain pipe in. It seems as if there should be an easier way, but we
don't know one," Albert stopped and looked at The Chief, who leaned back
in his chair and thought a minute.

"I guess, boys, we had better stop and talk over the matter of drainage.
There are three kinds of drains, namely: the open drain, the blind
drain, and the tile drain. Each one has worked out of the other. The
simplest sort and the one man first used is the open ditch. A piece of
land was covered with water. A ditch was dug through the land at the
place or places where water was standing. Usually a little stone is
thrown into the bottom to help drain the water off.

"Such a drain put out of use quite a bit of land. So partly because of
this a second sort of drain was worked out. A good body of stone was put
into the drain, then earth filled in over this. Water percolating down
through the soil followed along these drainage courses. Formerly it
settled in spots and made boggy land. Finally a more systematic sort of
drain developed from this last one. Instead of a body of stone, a drain
tile was placed on the bottom of the trench.