bell had rung I should have had no choice, but I finally crawled out, just in time, feeling very foolish, and returned the coat and boots unsoiled. A mile farther I came to Croton dam and the head of the new aqueduct. I may use that hard earned and once highly prized piece of paper some other time when I feel more like it. A brief description of this great work may not be uninteresting. The present aqueduct runs near the Hudson River, but the rich property holders along its course would combine to effectually prevent another aqueduct from boring its way through their fine grounds, so the only thing to be done was to go back five or six miles into the mountains and tunnel the whole distance of thirty-five or forty miles. The head of the two aqueducts are close together, but whereas the old one winds along the banks of the Hudson on the surface, the new one takes a straight course from New York, the first nine miles being a bee line. Every mile or two holes are dug down into the mountain, these shafts varying from 50 to 400 feet in depth, and then tunnels are started out in opposite directions till they meet those being dug from the next shaft. This tunnel goes through solid rock, under swamps and ponds, through mountains, and finally passes under the Harlem River, eighty feet beneath its bed, into the city. Think of a hole eighteen or twenty feet in diameter being dug as far below the surface of the earth as the Genius of Connecticut on the dome of the Capitol at Hartford is above it; this hole going from Hartford down under the Meriden hills and coming out at New Haven. How do those railroad tunnels through the Alps compare with this? There are about twenty-five of these shafts, and six or seven hundred men are constantly working, day and night, down in the bowels of the earth. The tunnels are lighted by the Schuyler Electric Light Company of Hartford. The average fall to New York is eight inches to the mile, and the water will not run much faster than a mile an hour. I have probably ridden over this tunnel half a dozen times during the past two days, and every farmer along its course for twenty-five miles knows about how far underneath him these men are working. Frequently an explosion that shakes buildings five miles away reminded me of what was going on. Asking of a good woman to-day how much the bread and milk I had of her would be, she replied, "Five or ten cents if thee is able to pay."