Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1876 — There is Death in Your Well. [ARTICLE]

There is Death in Your Well.

A few days since I was spending a short vacation at the cquntry residence of a friend whose well usually yielded pure and cold-water. But- his wife saM that 1 every season there would be a few 1 weeks when the water would smell and taste so offensively that it was almost impossible to drink it. While 1 was there the water fairly stunk. I assured my friend that I was satisfied there must be some dead animal in the water. I told him to procure two mirrors and wc would look down to the bottom. If anything were there we could see it. Don’t let the women know what we propose to do, or they'll all be sick for a month. It was Sunday. We told them we would walk leisurely toward the church and they could come at , their convenience. By this stratagem we induced them all to leave the premises. Then, with the two mirrors, we threw the light of the sun to the bottom of the well. The sight was appalling! Close to the end of the pipe through which water ,is drawn into the kitchen, where fll the drinking water is obtained, lay two large dead toads, half decayed, while three others were floating on the surface of the water. Well, what could be dene? We commenced pumping the water out, but the well was so deep and the water so abundant that after we had pumped and pumped until the water was only four feet deep, it would flo\y in as fast as we could draw it out. Thewell was bricked up on the sides, so that a person could not go down into it as one can descend from stone to stone when the well is stoned. More than this, he said that there was not a man in his vicinity who could be hired for gold to go down into such, a deep well and take out those dead toads. I told him that I was not afraid to go down into a well twice as deep. So we searched the premises and found an old pulley and a rope of sufficient length to extend to the water when doubled. We then set up three rails over the well with the upper ends lashed together with a rope so as to form a tripod, to the top of which a single pulley was secured. A rope was then put over the pulley, and at one end .of the rope a loop was made of sufficient size for a man to sit in. After fixing a small piece of board in the loop I sat astride of it and let myself down into the well by taking hold of the slack rope on the other side or the pulley. As soon as my feet touched the water I tied the slack rope to the loop in which I was sitting. There I sat, like a boy in a swing. Then, with a long stick tied to the handle of a tin dipper, the dead toads were fished up. By throwing the sunlight down to the bottom with the mirrors f could see distinctly whatever was qt the bottom of the water. The person at the top of the well let a pail down, so that whatever was dipped up could be poured into it and drawn to the surface of the, ground. It required about half as much muscle to draw myself up out of the well by hauling on one branch of the rope as it would to climb a rope. But, as the man at the top assisted, I came up out of that deep well with ease. I, have penned the foregoing details for the benefit of those who have never heard of such appliances for letting a man down into a deep well. A long rope and single pulley are. all th§| one needs. Well, I had scarcely changed my clothes when all the women came from church, parting and thirsty. Of course we kept our own counsel, while they went f6r water, which, they all admitted, was never more agreeable and luxurious. “Why, this morning,” said they, “we could scarcely drink it; now it is not the bit offensive. What has caused such a change?”* Echo answered, “What has caused it?” Reader, examine yourwells.— Agricola , in N. Y. Herald.