This is the memory palace. I'm Nate Domeo. Henry Nichols wakes up early one Saturday and rides

out to Stub Nual's farm. Stub is his brother-in-law and sometimes he throws him some cash to do some

odd jobs like paint a fence or whatever. This time it's to dig a well. Henry brings his buddy

Gideon with him. Gideon had lost his arm a few years back in the Civil War, but he says he'd be

willing to give Henry a hand, so to speak. And Stub takes them out to the field behind his barn,

points to some spot in the ground. It seems totally arbitrary. In Henry and Gideon start digging.

And the whole thing is taking forever. The ground is really hard and they're digging for hours.

Then Henry's shovel hits something. Gideon clambers down into the hole. He starts clearing

away the dirt with his one hand. And he finds a foot, a giant foot. George Hall was getting nowhere.

He had spent years farming tobacco in upstate New York, trying to find riches in the soil.

He had done pretty well during the war. People wanted their cigars and they couldn't get them

from the Carolinas anymore. Then the south surrendered and everything went south, up north.

His business fell apart. So George Hall decided to look for actual riches in the dirt. He headed

to the gold fields of California. In on his way west, Hall stops in Acque, Iowa.

And he's at a bar and he gets into an argument with a Methodist preacher.

George Hall is an atheist and a loud one. And the preacher is a drinker and a loud one,

and the two go at it about the Bible all night long. The preacher is all literal word of God on one

side and Hall's all book of fairy stories on the other. In the crux of their particular version of

this predictable argument, which is upon a line in Genesis that says, there were giants

upon the earth in those days. And that is just too much for George Hall. You can't stand how

dumb people are. They'll just believe anything. Henry and Gideon believed they had found a dead Indian.

That's what they said when Stubb Newell came back to check on how well the well was doing.

...