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The term has been found applied to soldiers of the Napoleonic wars. The French soldier of to-day, coming from the trenches looking like a well-digger, but contented, hearty, and strong, is the poilu par excellence. The origin of the term "Boche," meaning a German, has been treated in a thousand articles, and controversy has raged over it.
Every man to his taste. I should have called it a well-digger. Erect upon the highest stretch of riddled walls, with his legs spraddled far apart and his arms jerking in expressive gestures, he told us how the German infantry had advanced across the open ground.
Such an individual was not easy to find, for in the region in which I lived wells had become unfashionable; but I determined to persevere in my search, and in about a week I found a well-digger. He was a man of somewhat rough exterior, but of an ingratiating turn of mind. It was easy to see that it was his earnest desire to serve me.
We crossed the ridge of the hill into the low ground on the other side. Here were no buildings, nothing which would interfere with the purity of a well. My well-digger walked slowly over the ground with his divining-rod. Very soon he exclaimed: "Here is water!" And picking up a stick, he sharpened one end of it and drove it into the ground.
Then he dug some more, and, all of a sudden, his shovel went down into some water, and then Grandpa Croaker knew that the well was almost finished. He dug out a little more earth, in came more water, wetting his feet, and then the frog well-digger cried: “I’ve struck water! I’ve struck water!” “Hurrah!” shouted Bawly. “Hurray!
I could not understand him. It seemed to me that he was talking wildly. He filled his pipe and lighted it and sat upon the wall. "Now," said he, after he had taken a few puffs, "I'll tell you where the trouble's been with your well. People are always in too big a hurry in this world about all sorts of things as well as wells. I am a well-digger and I know all about them.
This, through average ice that is, about six or seven feet will take about an hour and a half, though an expert native will do it in perhaps half that time. It is a blessing to get water at this time, and a great shout goes up from the well-digger, as the delicious fluid comes bubbling up through the narrow well, that is echoed by the igloo builders and spreads throughout the camp.
It was lined with great tiles, nearly a yard in diameter, and my well-digger, after congratulating me on finding water so easily, bade me good-by and departed with his men and his derrick.
In some lodges the Prince of Wales would have to walk turkey right beside a well-digger, and it would do the prince good and not hurt the well-digger. But if I was in your place I would not join a lodge yet. Try the Salvation Army first," and Uncle Ike got up and went to the window, and listened to the bugle and bass drum and tambourine of the army as it passed on its nightly round.
It was quite natural that the scarcity of water for domestic purposes should affect my wife much more than it did me, and perceiving the discontent which was growing in her mind, I determined to dig a well. The very next day I began to look for a well-digger.
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