full of springs. The serious feature of the case was that there seemed
to be no available outlet in any direction. Unlike the mellow, sandy
loam in front of the house, the swale in the rear was of the stiffest
kind of clay--just the soil to retain and be spoiled by water. During
the first year of our residence here this region was sometimes a pond,
sometimes a quagmire, while again, under the summer sun, it baked into
earthenware. It was a doubtful question whether this stubborn acre
could be subdued, and yet its heavy clay gave me just the diversity of
soil I needed. Throughout the high gravelly knoll on which the house
stands, the natural drainage is perfect, and a sagacious neighbor
suggested that if I cut a ditch across the clayey swale into the
gravel of the knoll, the water would find a natural outlet and
disappear.

The ditch was dug eight feet wide and five feet deep, for I decided to
utilize the surface of the drain as a road-bed. Passing out of the
clay and hard-pan, we came into the gravel, and it seemed porous
enough to carry off a fair-sized stream. I concluded that my difficult
problem had found a cheap and easy solution, and to make assurance
doubly sure, I directed the men to dig a deep pit and fill it with
stones. When they had gone about nine feet below the surface, I
happened to be standing on the brink of the excavation, watching the
work. A laborer struck his pick into the gravel, when a stream gushed
out which in its sudden abundance suggested that which flowed in the
wilderness at the stroke of Moss's rod. The problem was now
complicated anew. So far from finding an outlet, I had dug a well
which the men could scarcely bail out fast enough to permit of its
being stoned up.

My neighbors remarked that my wide ditch reminded them of the Erie