ONCE SILVER STREAMS. 97 



at his transgression by helping to turn the river 

 into a vast open sewer ? So long as the "Authority" 

 pours filthy excrement into the river, the local 

 manufacturer has them on the hip, and is safe. 

 This Sanitary Authority for the most part con- 

 sists of magistrates and manufacturers ; of men 

 whose interests are so identical that they tacitly 

 agree that the townsfolk may play the part of 

 the shuttlecock to their battledores. And all 

 this in spite of the fact that these same towns- 

 folk' have paid, by their hardly-got earnings, a 

 hundred thousand pounds for the carrying out 

 of a main-sewage scheme, in order that the purity 

 of the river might be for ever retained. 



Then there are those thousand objects of the 

 river-side, which have such a healthful influence 

 upon the inhabitants. Many of the trees stand 

 starkly outlined against the sky, with great black 

 skeleton limbs, the hoisted "black flags" of Nature, 

 proclaiming each that a life has been sacrificed 

 to pollution. The birds and flowers have gone, 

 and we have in their place a vast line of inky 

 desolation, unrelieved by colour or life. What 

 impresses one most is the desolation, and silence, 

 and bare coldness that seem to have taken 

 possession of the lifeless stream. Where are 

 the moorhens that rustled among the reeds ; the 

 kingfisher in green and gold ; the white-breasted 



H 



