The whole proceeding is based upon the idea, that the rent or income of the property is sufficiently increased, to make the operation advantageous to all parties. It is assumed, that the operation of drainage, under one of these statutes, will be effectual to increase the rent of the land, to the amount of this annual payment, for at least fifty years. The fact, that the British Government, after the most thorough investigation, has thus pronounced the opinion, that drainage works, properly conducted, will thus increase the rent of land, and remain in full operation a half century at least, affords the best evidence possible, both of the utility and the durability of tile drainage.
CHAPTER XXII
DRAINAGE OF CELLARS.
Wet Cellars Unhealthful.—Importance of Cellars in New England.—A Glance at the Garret, by way of Contrast.—Necessity of Drains.—Sketch of an Inundated Cellar.—Tiles best for Drains.—Best Plan of Cellar Drain; Illustration.—Cementing will not do.—Drainage of Barn Cellars.—Uses of them.—Actual Drainage of a very Bad Cellar described.—Drains Outside and Inside; Illustration.
No person needs to be informed that it is unhealthful, as well as inconvenient, to have water, at any time of the year, in the cellar. In New England, the cellar is an essential part of the house. All sorts of vegetables, roots, and fruit, that can be injured by frost, are stored in cellars; and milk, and wine, and cider, and a thousand "vessels of honor," like tubs and buckets, churns and washing-machines, that are liable to injury from heat or cold, or other vicissitude of climate, find a safe retreat in the cellar. Excepting the garret, which is, as Ariosto represents the moon to be, the receptacle of all things useless on earth, the cellar is the greatest "curiosity shop" of the establishment.
The poet finds in the moon,
"Whate'er was wasted in our earthly state,
Here safely treasured—each neglected good,
Time squandered, and occasion ill-bestowed;
There sparkling chains he found, and knots of gold,
The specious ties that ill-paired lovers hold;
Each toil, each loss, each chance that men sustain,
Save Folly, which alone pervades them all,
For Folly never quits this earthly ball."
In the garret, are the old spinning wheel, the clock reel, the linen wheel with its distaff, your grandfather's knapsack and cartridge-box and Continental coat, your great-aunt's Leghorn bonnet and side-saddle, or pillion, great files of the village newspapers—the "Morning Cry" and "Midnight Yell," besides worn out trunks and boxes without number. In the cellar, are the substantiate—barrels of beef, and pork, and apples, "taters" and turnips; in short, the Winter stores of the family.
Many, perhaps most, of the cellars in New England are in some way drained, usually by a stone culvert, laid a little lower than the bottom of the cellar, into which the water is conducted, in the Spring, when it bursts through the walls, or rises at the bottom, by means of little ditches scooped out in the surface.
In some districts, people seem to have little idea of drains, even for cellars; and on flat land, endeavor to set their houses high enough to have their cellars above ground. This, besides being extremely inconvenient for passage out of, and into the house, often fails to make a dry cellar, for the water from the roof runs in, and causes a flood. And such accidents, as they are mildly termed by the improvident builders, often occur by the failure of drains imperfectly laid.
No child, who ever saw a cellar afloat, during one of these inundations, will ever outgrow the impression. You stand on the cellar stairs, and below is a dark waste of waters, of illimitable extent. By the dim glimmer of the dip-candle, a scene is presented which furnishes a tolerable picture of "chaos and old night," but defies all description. Empty dry casks, with cider barrels, wash-tubs, and boxes, ride triumphantly on the surface, while half filled vinegar and molasses kegs, like water-logged ships, roll heavily below. Broken boards and planks, old hoops, and staves, and barrel-heads innumerable, are buoyant with this change of the elements; while floating turnips and apples, with, here and there, a brilliant cabbage head, gleam in this subterranean firmament, like twinkling stars, dimmed by the effulgence of the moon at her full. Magnificent among the lesser vessels of the fleet, "like some tall admiral," rides the enormous "mash-tub," while the astonished rats and mice are splashing about at its base in the dark waters, like sailors just washed, at midnight, from the deck, by a heavy sea.