1884.] CIVILIZATION AND ITS WASTES. 253 



nearly forty years ago. Our trouble, everywhere, proceeds from 

 ignorance, preoccupation of capital, and mistaken teaching. 



In Paris, visitors are shown with pride an underground sewer- 

 city of 25,000 people. New York shakes in its miasmatic borders 

 for fear the Hudson will be dried by northern wood-choppers till 

 water fails to wash its skirts of filth. Yet an underground rail- 

 way is wanted to balance the duplicate system above. The older 

 city of Paris, to offset its subterranean glory, makes occasional 

 bloody exhibitions above-ground, of which mankind thinks with a 

 shudder. 



The tiresome old remedy — is there no other? — for rich, lazy, 

 and filthy communities, was a course of . depleting government, 

 followed by fire and sword and a howling desert — the abomination 

 of desolation! After that every pool and stream .was left clear 

 enough to mirror the heads of wild beasts, stooping to quench 

 their thirst. 



To fear that society is too far along with its polluted streams 

 to stop its nastiness, is to oifer the same reason for the abuse as 

 the old granny gave when her young cub, just from sea, abused 

 her well: "Johnny is so accustomed to using the water in that 

 way, you know! " 



Can it be supposed, in a new and vigorou? country like ours, 

 that the course of social affairs will be fashioned after the dii'ty 

 tricks of more than brutal boys, and the moral cowardice of old 

 grannies of either sex? 



"Whoever fancies that our ripest towns, simdered by long rail- 

 way distances from each other, are to be judged of as to which 

 way they will jump, or grow, or fall, in the same category with the 

 effete cities of ancient times, makes a mistake. 



No doubt there are places upon this continent tolerably well 

 fixed to support the sewer-rats of foreign communities now being 

 shipped to us, and engender local human corruption of our own. 

 We see people every day learning to stew and ferment their 

 drinks. We find, by consultation with eminent savans, that there 

 is a "scientific" basis for dashing water, suspected of retaining 

 microscopic germs of danger, with alcohol. It may possibly be 

 that this great American people, selected by the free air of these 

 times from among all nations, is standing now face to face with 

 the road leading to death and the ruggeder path towards lasting 



