sez he in faint axents:

"I laid out to build it after the house wuz done." Sez I, "What wuz
you goin' to do with the dirt?"

"Why, I laid out," sez he lookin' helplessly round for a excuse, "I
laid out to bring it up in baskets," and he went on brightenin' up as
a idee struck him--"I've observed, Samantha, that dirt is handy for
house plants, or to plant seeds in the spring of the year."

Sez I dryly, "I guess three or four hundred wagon loads won't be
needed for house plants, and after Tirzah Ann sees all that dirt
lugged up her suller stairs and through her kitchen she won't have
much time or ambition for posies."

[Illustration: "_'The suller!' He stood agast, perfectly dumb-foundered
but wuzn't goin' to give in he had made a mistake. It wuz
too mortifying to his pride._" (_See page 318_)]

"Well," sez he, a bright idee occurrin' to him, "it will be a first
rate job for the men to do rainy days. In buildin' a house there
hain't much a man can do durin' a hard thunder storm, or hail storm,
but they can go right on with the suller jest as well as though it wuz
a sunshiny day. That is one great thing that architects have
heretofore overlooked, work that men can do durin' cyclones--I have
met that want," sez he proudly.

"I should think as much," sez I mekanically, for my thoughts wuzn't
there, they wuz afar with Tirzah with her poor health, and the blow
that had got to come onto her, when she see this thing that wuz rared
up in front of me.

Well, I went round to the kitchen door, the winders all seemed sot in
tottlin' and shaky, and my pen fails me to tell the looks of them back
door steps, they wuz very high here, for the land sloped off sudden,
but suffice it to say that I wouldn't trust even one foot on 'em for a
dollar bill. There wuz a great long concern that looked like a huge
wooden arm that come out of the settin' room winder on that side and
seemed to reach down to the water, and sez I, "What, for the land's
sake! is that?"

"That," sez he proudly, "is the crownin' work of my life! that will
make me famous and enormously rich when it becomes known to the
world. That is a attachment to hitch onto the sewin' machine, the
churn, the coffee mill or any domestic article where foot or hand
power is used, and is to be used in pumpin' water."

"Pumpin' water!" sez I coldly, "what for?"

"Oh, for drinkin', for irrigatin', or for any use that water is used
for, puttin' out fires, or anything."

Sez I co