This was an
insufficient water-supply.
It had been a rainy season when we first went there, and for
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.
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