and alone. "We haven't had any water for
three weeks, because our pipe won't act, and
the man as collects the rent says he'll see to it,
and don't do nothing," quietly observed a pallid
brush-maker, whose yard we were in. "Yes,
the sink's often stopped up like that, and it gets
foul, and smells much worse than this; and if
the neighbours didn't let us have some of theirs,
we shouldn't have no water at all." In no case
were the butts or cisterns, even of the houses
in which the supply was by comparison good,
provided with a covering. In every instance
they acted as traps for the foul exhalations from
closet and yard; and the water they held—the
sole supply, be it remembered, for drinking, cooking,
and washing—bore a scum upon its surface
which might be skimmed off and bottled as a
drink for producing fever.

After exploring house after house in Cummin-
street, finding the yards in every case ill-paved,
in most cases with wide patches of black foul
soil between the porous brick and irregular bits
of soft stone; observing, too, that the poor tenants
had generally to provide the barrels and pans
in which the water was kept, the house-owner
making no such provision; noting that in no
one instance were the closets efficiently
appointed; learning from my medical friends
that the sloppy soil of the yards, and the
exposed condition of the water, close as it
always was to closet, drain, and earth, were
positive invitations to fever and death—I left,
wondering, if this were a thoroughfare held up
for admiration by the local authorities, what
could have been its condition before it
benefited by their purifying hand, and how
much worse might be the sights in store for me.
We had seen children at play in yards five feet
by three, where the oozings from the panless
closets had saturated the black soil, where an
open stagnant drain mingled its effluvia with
that of rotting water-butts, and where an open
dust-heap, with its concomitants of cabbage-
stalks and the heads and tails of long departed
fish, furnished forth the toys; and it became a
curious problem what could be shown us more
fatally destructive to health.

Passing through long and narrow streets,
where "fever at six and eight," "cholera so
bad in 1853 and nothing done since," "an open
cesspool at the back of that house," "man and his
wife and several children died of the fever in the
room where those broken windows are," made
up the notes by the way, we gained a small
thoroughfare, a great part of which was rented
by the greengrocer at the corner, who sublet
it in single rooms to the tenants we were
about to visit. Fever had raged here furiously,
a formal report had been made to the vestry by
the doctor six weeks before, and the result was
that an officer of the parish had been instructed
"to see what could be done;" the result of
which energetic measure was, that the exalted
functionary in question being very busy, "had
sent his man to put a little lime down." The
back yards here were so inconceivably horrible,
that those of Cummin-street seemed clean and
wholesome by comparison. Here, the oozing
and soil from the closet comes through its walls
of rotten wood, permeates the black earth of
the little yard on which there is not even a
pretence of paving, and runs down to the open
window of the dwelling-room, where a box-
maker and his wife are at work. Night and day
this couple, type of the dozens of other couples
with which the houses are crammed, inhale
the stench and effluvia from closet, and from the
dead dogs and garbage of the yard beyond. The
woman told us they were compelled "to close
the window when the smell became unusually
bad, and made them feel faint," but they were
now working on unconcernedly, though its
strength was powerfully apparent to noses less
painfully acclimatised. The tubs or barrels in
the yard were, of course, uncovered, and were
lined with a thick green fungus, like the water-
moss we think so pretty in an aquarium. On
scraping the side of one of these, the foul slime
came off, inch thick, upon the finger; and on
one of our party trying the experiment too
hastily, a portion of the barrel itself was scooped
out, for it was of the consistency of touchwood,
and crumbled in the hand. Windows were
opened, and invitations "to see the sort of
place they charge three shillings and ninepence a
week for," were freely given us. A broken ceiling,
through which the rain was dripping steadily
in three places at once; walls rapidly crumbling
through neglect and dirt; a bedstead and two
rude chairs; made up the home. Nothing spoke
of the personal occupancy of the tenant, save
the few miserable rags drying on the string
running across the room. What clothes she had,
she wore; what clothes her husband possessed,
were with him seeking work at the water-side.
"Yes, she'd had children, but they were all
dead. She hadn't been here long enough to
speak about the water or the smell, but her
neighbours told her it was bad, and she supposed
it wasn't healthy, but what were they to do
with her husband wanting to live near his work,
which was looking out for jobs at the water-
side?" So with her neighbour in the little room
opposite; so with the old couple who were crooning
over a small fire in a room below, and whose
folding bed was turned up, because of the simple
impossibility of sitting or standing or doing
anything but lying on it when it was put down;
so with the decent woman with a child in her
arms, whose hulking, sleeping husband "was
not drunk, but had been over-persuaded with a
glass of rum, which had been too much for
him;" all paying from a fourth to a fifth of
their weekly pittance—earned with what bitter
difficulty God only knows—for the privilege of
being slowly and surely killed off by the deadly
fever-taint coming from vitiated water and
poisoned air. In these houses the cholera raged
furiously in 1853, when the most urgent
representations were made to the vestry, of the
necessity of prompt and decided action. In these
houses fever patients are perpetually found, and
the report of six weeks ago has, so far, been as
unproductive of any practical improvement as