and lids to cover the cisterns with? Ah! that
showed how little we knew the sort of people
he had to deal with. Why, they'd steal the
taps, and burn the lids for firewood,— that's
what they'd do, befofe they'd been put there a
week. Scum upon the water made it unwholesome
because it caught the taint of the closet and
yard? Well, there was a good deal of fancy in
such things, leastwise he'd found so; and if the
gentlemen would taste it, he'd back the water
out of that tank to be the best and sweetest in
the street. Why, his houses had to supply all
the neighbours with water for three weeks, not
so long ago; and he'd spent so much money
on the property—five pounds once on a
single house—that there'd be very little hanging
to it, very little indeed, at the end of the year.
Ought to be a supply of water to the closet?
Why, didn't we see that waste-pipe at the top of
the cistern? Well, that pipe did supply water
to the closet whenever it was over-full; and if
the mark there showed that the water hadn't
reached the pipe for weeks, why the mark told
lies, or else it was the fault of the water
company; and he couldn't be expected to help that.
Windows ought to open at the top, ought they?
Did we know how much sashes and new panes
had cost him since he'd bought the houses,
which he wished he'd never seen them? And
all for people who didn't like windows which
were not broken, who smashed the tiles on the
roof for mischief, and who'd make the place
foul and dirty again in a week, if you was to
paint and whitewash it from top to bottom.
They liked dirt, and wouldn't use water not if
it was tapped and messed into every room of
the place; and, as far as water went, he was
bound to say—repeating it each time as if it were
an original remark—if that was all they wanted,
his tanks were the very best in all the street.

The opinions of this excellent landlord are
worth recording, because he was a not unfavourable
specimen of his class; and his houses, bad
as they are, are palaces compared to hundreds
of others in the same parish. We had, in this
worthy tradesman and house-owner, the raw
material from which vestries are composed, just
as in the foul water, in the damp and sodden
yard, and in the open closet, we had the raw
material from which typhus is manufactured
wholesale. There is neither exaggeration nor
straining after effect in the statements made
concerning the fever-dens of certain metropolitan
districts. Beds of typhus may be marked out
with the same exactitude as the strata in a
geological diagram, and in a single afternoon
you may walk through street after street, and
alley after alley, from which the fever-taint
never departs; where residence, deliberate and
aforethought, would be as suicidal as if we put
arsenic in our tea; and where every condition of
air, water, and drainage, remains as it was twelve
years ago, when the nation was panic-stricken,
and cholera carried off thousands of rich and poor.

St. Dragon's, as every one knows, is on the
Surrey side of the Thames; and Cummin-street
is quoted as a favourable specimen of what can
be accomplished by an intelligent vestry,
resolute on local improvement. It is true that the
progress of my friend the physician seemed like
that of a very popular member visiting his
constituency, so frequently was he recognised by
people who had been in-patients of the hospital;
but this awkward circumstance, of course,
belonged to a past condition of things; for has
not Cummin-street been inspected, and swept,
and garnished; and is it not held up as a model
of sanitary excellence? Look at its roadway—
can anything be more comfortable, or more
surely conduce to longevity, than its present
condition? Foul black slime, ankle-deep in
many places; pools of stagnant filthy water;
heaps of offal, and heads and entrails of the fish
being cured in the houses on each side of it;
occasional dead dogs and cats cast in from
adjacent courts; lumps of dung, and hillocks
of sodden straw; such is its still life. The
scavenger comes occasionally; but either our
visits have been singularly unfortunate, and the
people we have questioned particularly untruthful,
or the appearance of that functionary is not
frequent enough to affect the normal condition of
the place. Children of all ages are playing in and
with this filth. Some little faces are not yet marred
by the pestilential influences, moral and physical,
with which they are surrounded; others, notably
that group of sickly girls languidly toying with
the fish-heads just thrown out of the open door
beyond them, look ripe for coffin and shroud;
others again, as the group of ragged youths
playing at pitch-halfpenny, are the hardened
and acclimatised survivors of diseases which year
after year have thinned their ranks. The street
is full of workers. Lift the latch of any one of
the doors, and you stand in a kitchen where
chairs are being made, or brushes manufactured,
or fish is salted, or old packing-rags and the
lead linings from tea-chests are being dexterously
manipulated for future use. Ask to see a
back yard, or make inquiry as to trade, or
number of family, or condition and calling of the
husband, and you meet with unrepining answers
and ready civility. It is passing strange, too,
that the people who are, as your friend the
landlord and possible vestryman insists, so
irremediably addicted to mischief and dirt,
should, out of their scanty means, have spent
money in decoration. None of the houses but
show some little effort at ornament; few but
contain one or two of the simple home relics
women love to keep. We are evidently not
visiting the abodes of profligacy or idleness;
and the question will assert itself, are not these
people somewhat maligned, and might they not
be as capable of appreciating clear pure water, and
less terribly unwholesome air, as the interested
critics who deny them both? Meanwhile they
sicken and die, and the fever-poison spreads.
"I come from the country, myself, and I've had
the fever, because London does not agree with
me," said a poor woman, whose hollow cadaverous
cheeks, and wasted form, spoke with touching
significance of the day when the poor little
lame girl at her side would be motherless