might have--just what you have here at the mouth of this glen,--our Mount
and the Warren Hill,--long slopes with sheets of drifted gravel and sand
at their feet, stretching down into what was once an icy sea, and is now
the Vale of Blackwater. And this I really believe Madam How has done
simply by lifting Hartford Bridge Flat a few more feet out of the sea,
and leaving the rest to her trusty tool, the water in the sky.

That is my guess: and I think it is a good guess, because I have asked
Madam How a hundred different questions about it in the last ten years,
and she always answered them in the same way, saying, "Water, water, you
stupid man." But I do not want you merely to depend on what I say. If
you want to understand Madam How, you must ask her questions yourself,
and make up your mind yourself like a man, instead of taking things at
hearsay or second-hand, like the vulgar. Mind, by "the vulgar" I do not
mean poor people: I mean ignorant and uneducated people, who do not use
their brains rightly, though they may be fine ladies, kings, or popes.
The Bible says, "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good." So do
you prove my guess, and if it proves good, hold it fast.

And how can I do that?

First, by direct experiment, as it is called. In plain English--go home
and make a little Hartford Bridge Flat in the stable-yard; and then ask
Mrs. How if she will not make a glen in it like this glen here. We will
go home and try that. We will make a great flat cake of clay, and put
upon it a cap of sand; and then we will rain upon it out of a watering-
pot; and see if Mrs. How does not begin soon to make a glen in the side
of the heap, just like those on Hartford Bridge Flat. I believe she
will; and certainly, if she does, it will be a fresh proof that my guess
is right. And then we will see whether water will not make glens of a