"By listening to men who've been in the business many years. Most of them have had to take scrub jobs once in a while. But please secure the right of way at once for the main ditch; that's where the work should begin. I shouldn't wonder if you could get a lot of volunteer labor from the villagers, if you go about it rightly; for your Doctor Taggess believes that to drain the swamps would be to greatly lessen the number and violence of malarial attacks,--perhaps banish malaria entirely,--and I suppose you know what it means for a town, in certain parts of the West, to have a no-malaria reputation. It means manufactures, and better prices for building sites, and perhaps the beginnings of a city." "Mr. Truett, I shouldn't wonder if you've struck just the place to exercise your professional wits." "I hope so. I'll soon find out, if you'll arrange that combination of land-owners, and secure that right of way. Now is the golden time, while the swamp land has least water and the earth is easiest handled." Doctor Taggess, summoned for consultation on the drainage subject, promised to make an earnest speech at any general meeting that might be called; so Philip hurried about among the merchants, town and county officials, and other local magnates, and arranged for an anti-malaria, city-compelling mass-meeting at the court-house at an early date. Political jealousies and personal dog-in-the-manger feeling are quite as common in small towns as in great ones, but the possibility of a village becoming a city, and farm property being cut up into building-lots at high prices, is the one darling hope of every little village in the far West, and at the right time--or even at the wrong one--it may be depended upon to weld all discordant elements into one great enthusiastic force. When the meeting was held, Doctor Taggess made a strong plea for the proposed improvement, from the standpoint of the public health; the young engineer read a mass of statistics on the amazing fertility of drained swamp lands, and announced his willingness to wait for his own pay until his work proved itself effective; and the county clerk told of scores of Western villages, settled no longer ago than Claybanks, that had become cities. The upshot was that the improvement plan was adopted without a dissenting voice, and the right of way was secured at the meeting itself, as was also a volunteer force to begin work at once on the main ditch. "Truett," said Philip, after the meeting adjourned, and he, the engineer, and Doctor Taggess walked away together, "unless you've made some mistake in your figures, this enterprise will make you a great man in this section of country." "That's what I wish it to do," was the reply, "for I must make a permanent start somewhere." "Your offer to defer asking for pay till the drainage should prove successful," said the Doctor, "helped the movement amazingly, and it also made everybody think you a very fair man." "Yes? Well, that's why I made it"