As I have said, the ground here sloped down eastward toward the brook, and if I was to have a level lawn south of my house, I should have to remove at least two feet of soil from the western end and deposit it on the eastern end. I wisely decided to start close to the house. Hauling at the handles of the heavy scraper and yelling "Back up, there!" at the horse, I got the steel scoop into the ground at the line of my proposed grape arbour, tipped down the blade, and cried, "Giddup!" I hung to the reins as best I could, twisting them about my wrist, and the horse started obediently forward. The scoop did its work very nicely. In fact, it was quite full after we had gone six feet, and I had only to let the horse drag it the remaining ninety-four feet of the proposed width of the lawn, and empty it. Then I went back, and repeated the process. After five repetitions of the same process, the perspicacious reader will have reckoned that I had shaved off something less than half the width of my lawn, on one furrow, and was still a long, long way from being down to the required depth of two feet at the higher end. My arms already ached. As the scraper covered a furrow but two feet wide, that meant 125 furrows to scrape my entire lawn as planned, and at least twenty trips to the furrow. I did some rapid multiplication as I paused to wipe my brow. "Twenty times 125 is 2,500," thought I. I dropped the reins and moved toward my stakes. I saw that Joe and Mike were looking at me. "I think," said I, with some dignity, as I began to pull the stakes up, "that this lawn will look better square. As it's a hundred feet broad, a hundred feet will be far enough to extend it from the house." "Sure," said Mike, "the big road scraper 'll be over here to-morrow, scrapin' the road, and it do be easier an' quicker to borry that." In some ways, I consider this remark of Mike's, under the circumstances, one of the most gentlemanly I ever heard! And I jumped at his suggestion. "Mike," said I, "I'll admit this job is bigger than I thought. How can I borrow the road scraper?" "Sure, ain't me frind Dan Morrissy one o' the selictmen?" said Mike, "and ain't he the road boss, and ain't he willin' to earn an extra penny for--for the town?" "H'm," said I; "for the town! Well, I've got to have this lawn! You get your friend Dan in the morning. Just the same, I don't love the town so much that I want a 250-foot lawn."