86 THE COMMON SENSE OF THE MILK QUESTION 



from mud-carts, spatterings from coach-wheels, dirt 

 and trash chucked into it by roguish boys for the 

 joke's sake, the spewings of infants, who have slab- 

 bered in the tin measure, which is thrown back in 

 that condition among the milk, for the benefit of the 

 next customer; and, finally, the vermin that drops 

 from the rags of the nasty drab that vends this 

 precious mixture, under the respectable denomination 

 of milkmaid." 



The "literature of exposure" is not a new develop- 

 ment. Nothing ever printed concerning the milk 

 supply of this or any other time or place, by the most 

 sensational of "yellow" newspapers, can outdo this 

 account of London's milk supply by Smollett. How 

 much of the description we may accept as a fairly 

 just account of actual conditions, and how much 

 we must ascribe to Smollett's love of exaggeration, 

 we need not trouble to fathom. It is enough for us 

 to know that the conditions were bad enough to 

 provoke Smollett to attack them with all the 

 superb, if vulgar, vehemence of which he was 

 capable. 



n 



It will be observed by the careful reader that all the 

 filthy conditions which Smollett enumerated in his 

 sweeping condemnation were of human origin, due 



