Suppose, as is most usual, that the well is dug near the kitchen-door,--probably between kitchen and barn; the drain, if there is a drain from the kitchen, pouring out the dirty water of wash-day and all other days, which sinks through the ground, and acts as feeder to the waiting well.

Suppose the manure-pile in the barnyard also sends down its supply, and the privies contribute theirs.

The water may be unchanged in color or odor: yet none the less you are drinking a foul and horrible poison; slow in action, it is true, but making you ready for diphtheria and typhoid-fever, and consumption, and other nameless ills.

It is so easy to doubt or set aside all this, that I give one case as illustration and warning of all the evils enumerated above.
The State Board of Health for Massachusetts has long busied itself with researches on all these points, and the case mentioned is in one of their reports.

The house described is one in Hadley, built by a clergyman.