1884.] CIVILIZATION AND ITS WASTES. * 251 



ignorant practices as old as history or human depravity are not to 

 be finished in one afternoon. 



Some comfortable people may need to bear exactly bow it is 

 that their stench-traps do not give security. A kink in the trap 

 or pipe makes a perfect water-seal, we are told by the plumber. 

 Well, supposing the good cook pours boiling water from a kettle 

 of potatoes into the sink on a rainy day, when the main drains are 

 full. Must not confined sewer-gas when heated belch back through 

 the water-seal with flatulent ease ? 



Fresh inventions constantly expose the weaknesses and fallacies 

 of the older ones. We are pouring hot water at all hours from 

 our bed-rooms and kitchens, and a recent device for preventing 

 back-action of sewer-gas is a seal of quicksilver. 



Where parties are able to pay for it there is considerable inter- 

 est in testing all the new contrivances as they come along. People 

 of smaller means may be excused for skipping some. Readers 

 with no money at all, may (discover, cheaper than Solomon did, by 

 the perusal of numerous mutually neutralizing trade pamphlets, 

 how vain are all our combined schemes for family drainage and 

 family waste. 



A plan for relieving any chance-pressure of gas upon the house 

 system carries a pipe from the family main directly up, outside of 

 the house, by a gable or chimne}'. This open vent delivers the 

 poison into the upper stratum of air to be diluted and spread 

 among neighbors as smoke is with a rising barometer, or to fall 

 downward and be inhaled or drawn into open windows as smoke 

 is whenever the pressure of the atmosphere favors a fall. 



"We have examples of great cost in the appointments and collat- 

 erals of house-drainage with no corresponding safety or benefit to_ 

 general cleanliness. Did Mr. Vanderbilt spend $100,000 on his? 

 — or what was the figure ? Excessive outlays by the rich always 

 set the conservative middle classes and the poor to thinking. A 

 Diogenes of these days, like Henry Thoreau, would make a break 

 for the woods. We have comforting evidence within a few years, 

 however, of a ground-swell of opinion among our best housewives 

 that a decent out-house or closet, kept neat and tidy, upon some 

 handy modifications of the earth-pan, is a thing not to be 

 sneezed at. 



Some are throwing out earthen pipes now for pipes of cast and 

 also of wrought iron. But a doubt rises whether we really do any 



