or a long
time our cisterns gave us full aqueous satisfaction, but early this
year a drought had set in, and we were obliged to be exceedingly
careful of our water.

It was quite natural that the scarcity of water for domestic purposes
should affect my wife much more than it did me, and perceiving the
discontent which was growing in her mind, I determined to dig a well.
The very next day I began to look for a well-digger. Such an
individual was not easy to find, for in the region in which I lived
wells had become unfashionable; but I determined to persevere in my
search, and in about a week I found a well-digger.

He was a man of somewhat rough exterior, but of an ingratiating turn of
mind. It was easy to see that it was his earnest desire to serve me.

"And now, then," said he, when we had had a little conversation about
terms, "the first thing to do is to find out where there is water.
Have you a peach-tree on the place?" We walked to such a tree, and he
cut therefrom a forked twig.

"I thought," said I, "that divining-rods were always of hazel wood."

"A peach twig will do quite as well," said he, and I have since found
that he was right. Divining-rods of peach will turn and find water
quite as well as those of hazel or any other kind of wood.

He took an end of the twig in each hand, and, with the point projecting
in front of him, he slowly walked along over the grass in my little
orchard. Presently the point of the twig seemed to bend itself
downward toward the ground.

"There," said he, stopping, "you will find water here."

"I do not want a well here," said I. "This is at the bottom of a hill,
and my barn-yard is at the top. Besides, it is too far from the house."

"Very good," said he. "We will try somewhere else."

His rod turned at several other places, but I had objections to all of
them. A sanitary engineer had once visited me, and he had given me a
great deal of advice about drainage, and I knew what to avoid.

We crossed the ridge of the hill into the low ground on the other side.
Here were no buildings, nothing which would interfere with the purity
of a well. My well-digger walked slowly over the ground with his
divining-rod. Very soon he exclaimed: "Here is water!" And picking
up a stick, he sharpened one end of it and drove it into the ground.
Then he took a string from his pocket, and making a loop in one end, he
put it over the stick.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.