out, though, that his bid was fairly moderate—as processed blue-stone roads go in this climate; and ours has cost us only about eight times as much as I had previously supposed a replica of the Appian Way would cost. However, it has been pronounced a very good road by critics who should know; not a fancy road, but a fair average one. 

 It would look smarter, of course, with wide brick gutters down either side of it for its entire length; and I should add brick gutters, too, if I were as comfortably fixed, say, as Mr. Charles Schwab, and felt sure that I could get some of the Vanderbilt boys to help me out in case I ran short of funds before the job was completed. Still, for persons who live simply it does very well. 

 With all these absorbing employments to engage us, we naturally were loath to turn our attentions to water. We had lived too long in a flat where, when you wanted water, you merely turned a faucet. To us water had always been a matter of course. But now the situation was different. With each succeeding day the flow from our spring was slackening. In its present puniness it was no more than a reminder of the brave stream of the springtime. 

 There was a water witch, so called, in the neighborhood—a gentleman water witch. We were recommended to avail ourselves of his services. It was his custom, we were told, to arm himself with a forked peach-tree switch and walk about over the land, holding the wand in front of him by its two prongs, meantime muttering strange incantations. When he came to a spot where water lay close to the surface the other end of his divining rod would dip magically toward the earth. You dug there, and if you struck water the magician took the credit for it; and if you didn't strike water it was a sign the peach-tree switch had wilfully deceived its proprietor, and he cut a fresh twig off another and more dependable tree and gave you a second demonstration at half rates. However, before opening negotiations with this person, I bethought me to interview the man who had contracted to do the boring. 

 The latter gentleman proved to be the most noncommittal man I ever met in my life. He was as chary about making predictions as to the result of operations in his line as the ticket agent of a jerkwater railroad down South is about estimating the probable time of arrival of the next passenger train—always conceding that there is to be any next train; and that is as chary as any human being can possibly be. Only upon one thing was he positive, which was that no peach-tree switch in the world could be educated up to the point where it 

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