Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1890 — The Old Well Sweep. [ARTICLE]

The Old Well Sweep.

I was driving with a friend the other day through a somewhat dreary stretch of country, where there seemed to be very little to attract notice or deserve remark, writes Oliver Wendell Holmes. Still the old spirit infused by “Eyes and No Eyes" was upon me, and I looked for something to fasten my thoughts upon and treat as an artist treats a study for a picture. The first object was an old-fashioned well sweep. It did not take much imaginative sensibility to bo stirred by the sight of this most useful, most aucient, most picturesque of domestic conveniences. I know something of the shadoof of Egypt—the same arrangement by which the sacred waters of the Nile have been lifted from the days of the Pharaohs to those of the Khedives. That long forefinger pointing to heaven was a symbol which spoke to the puritan exile as it spoke of old to the enslaved Israelite. Was there ever any such water as that which we used to draw from the deep, cold well, in the “old oaken bucket V” What memories gather about the well in all ages! What love matches have been made at its margin, from the lime of Jacob and Kachel downward! What fairy legends hover over it, what fearful mysteries has it hidden! The beautiful well sweep! It is too rarely that we see it, and as it dies out and gives place to the odiously convenient pump, with the last patent on its cast-iron uninterestingness, does it not seem as if the farmyard aspect had dost half its attraction! .So long as the dairy farm exists doubtless there must be every facility for getting water in abundance ; but the loss of the w ell sweep cannot be made up to us even if our milk were diluted to twice its present attenuation.