our
works. We propose to relieve ourself of this care, by connecting the
drains together, and building one or more reliable outlets.

GRATINGS OR SCREENS AT THE OUTLET.

There are many species of "vermin," both "creeping things" and "slimy
things, that crawl with legs," which seem to imagine that drains are
constructed for their especial accommodations. In dry times, it is a
favorite amusement of moles and mice and snakes, to explore the devious
passages thus fitted up for them, and entering at the capacious open
front door, they never suspect that the spacious corridors lead to no
apartments, that their accommodations, as they progress, grow "fine by
degrees and beautifully less," and that these are houses with no back
doors, or even convenient places for turning about for a retreat. Unlike
the road to Hades, the descent to which is easy, here the ascent is
inviting; though, alike in both cases, "_revocare gradum, hoc opus hic
labor est_." They persevere upward and onward till they come, in more
senses than one, to "an untimely end." Perhaps stuck fast in a small
pipe tile, they die a nightmare death; or, perhaps overtaken by a
shower, of the effect of which, in their ignorance of the scientific
principles of drainage, they had no conception, they are drowned before
they have time for deliverance from the straight in which they find
themselves, and so are left, as the poet strikingly expresses it, "to
lie in cold _obstruction_ and to rot."

In cold weather, water from the drains is warmer than the open ditch,
and the poor frogs, reluctant to submit to the law of Nature which
requires them to seek refuge in mud and oblivious sleep, in Winter,
gather round the outfalls, as they do about springs, to bask in the
warmth of the running water. If the flow is small, they leap up into
the pipe, and follow its course upward. In Summer, the drains furnish
for them a cool and shady retreat from the mid-day sun, and they may be
seen in single file by scores, at the approach of an intruding footstep,
scrambling up the pipe. Dying in this way, affects these creatures, as
"sighing and grief" did Falstaff, "blows them up like a bladder;" and,
like Sampson, they do more mischief in their death, than in all their
life together. They swell up, and stop the water entirely, or partially
dam it, so that the effect of the work is impaired.

To prevent injuries from this source, there should be, at every outlet,
a grating or screen of ca