Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1892-05-31

explosives, and l had to go out among
the neighbors to get dynamite and pow
der for blasting. Well digging in North
Carolina is still in its infancy and needs
a good deal of encouragement and cap
ital. My vel diggers furnish nothing
except their clothes. They clothe them
selves while digging the well. do the
rest.
had to borrow dynamite and carry it
to the works in my lap. l also had to
get eighteen feet of hose, as the well
digger said he only had few left. Hose.
as well as polasses and license, is used
in the plural number here. We speak
of those hose, those molasses and those
license.
This is the first well | have ever dag.
You get mind reader or water witch
first before digging well. He divines
| by means OF hazel crotch the location
of the vein. Then you secure a well
| digger, who does the actual digging at
so much per foot and found. One man
who dug a well here years ago on my
farm at three dollars per foot and found
| got down eighty feet and then the we'll
caved in on him. His widow has since
sued the owner of the place on the
| ground that her husband did his part of
the contract faithfully, but was not
found according to agreement. 1t in
wolves very fine legal point indeed
| In selecting 4 site for a house, | find
that l have placed it so high that the
well is going to be unusually massive.
In order to have the house where it
| would easily command view of Mr.
| Vanderbilt's tennis court, thus giving us
the benefit of the game without the
fatigue of playing it, have placed my
well at such al elevation that water will
be my most expensive drink this summer
My valet, whose duty it is to carry the
water, press my trousers and do the
chamberwork at the barn, took one look
down the well yesterday and handed in
his resignation. The well was opened
in March, and the cornerstone laid with
suitable ceremonies and a speech made
by Mr.. Depew, but the work has seemed
to drag some, owing to the fact that the
Tar Heel well digger does not own set
of tools, neither does he furnish powder,
caps nor hose. Just as would seat my
self in the library and proceed to work
on my great pos thumous job, to be called
THE Great Detective Series, or the
Tedious Task Of Inspector Byrnes in
Unearthing and Bringing to Justice the
Man who Struck Billy Patterson" my
farming superintendent would rush in
and, making a low salaam instead of
wiping his feet, state that the well sinker
was out of powder.
! would then dismiss the farming
III.
his duties. call him my farming super
intendent because it has a more pros
porous air to it. As a matter of fact, he
and his horse Lydia E. Pinkham consti-
tute the farm force and entire pomo-
logical staff. He is good staff, he and
Lydia. Together they are farming
eleven acres of Venetian red soil this
year, and putting molding on the lower
edge to keep the potatoes from falling
out of the ground and injuring Mr.. Van
derbilt's cotton crop and pajama plants,
which are growing on the farms just be-
low US.
Next year we will clear three more
acres of white oak, leaving the stumps
finished off artistically with large
carved acorn or some such design, SO
that the field will not be so unsightly, as
is too often the case with newly cleared
land. One field will also be cleared of
tulip and sourvood trees, the stumps,
however, to be ''champered Off like a
newell post of the Fifteenth century, and
ON each one of these chaste stumps a
piece of rustic china or plain white ware
will be set with enough soil ia it to sus-
tain geraniums and other choice plants,
30 that instead o. miserable and un-
slightly field covered with tlackened and
repulsive stumps we will have an orna-
ment of some lind wherever the eye
rests.
When I bought the farm it was sur