1884.] CIVILIZATION AND ITS WASTES. 243 



Let us beware of the false prophets who treacherously beguile us 

 toward tlie old ruin by showing how older nations are worse off 

 than we are. Such tempters will presently revive a belief in the 

 devil. 



A land with its rivers running filth instead of pure water, is 

 like a body with its veins running filth instead of pure blood. 



Being a damage to life, the loss and waste cannot be estimated 

 in money. To compound with the impurity of society for cash 

 would be to set some infinitely small part of the price upon the 

 purity of one's own soul. 



Should Mr. Blaine's recent proposition to divide the profits of 

 national grog-shops among the States, find favor in our sight, we 

 shall presently have some politician proposing a national scheme 

 for taxing stream pollution to pay our doctors' bills, and build 

 hospitals for the sick. 



Is this statesmanship run mad, or is it the millennial humility of 

 a government that would make every Lazarus of a nation live by 

 licking and healing its own sores ? 



In this dreadful matter there is a humorous element, grim or 

 not, as we please to take it. The old writers picture a justly in- 

 dignant deity laughing at our calamity. We may as well laugh 

 as cry over spilled milk, they say, and Captain Scott has well 

 quoted here the practical farm philosophy in our civilization of 

 " picking up the pail and starting for another cow." But if we 

 are losing our grip on the milk, and can't find another cow that 

 will stand our blundering drains upon her, shall we not have to 

 shift our practical philosophy, and alter our theories of goodness 

 to fit the incontrovertible facts? 



The historical joke in our case, Mr. Chairman, is, that the close 

 descendants of the very people who drove the Indian from the 

 land of his forefathers by tricky bargains — the power of rum and 

 sugar, small-pox, etc. — are being driven out of the land in turn — 

 our old extensive farming class is — by the stench of polluted 

 streams and the power of "malarial waves." 



"What ark of refuge can we build against this atmospheric flood 

 — what peak of Ararat can we land upon in safety from an over- 

 whelming malarial deluge? 



There is more grim humor in this sorry human race wherein 

 What's-his-name "takes the hindmost." Great cities everywhere 

 feel the terrible pressure of an uncontrollable parasitic population 



