order of things is to be disturbed, what can
we say, or do?

"'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,"

And I propose, therefore, to my fellow-
parishioners of Cess-cum-Poolton, that we
shall sit upon our hill like gods together, and
oppose movements of all kinds, whether
sanitary, social, or revolutionary.

It is of course for the sake of this principle
of quiet that I applaud the magnanimity of
many of the gentlemen who sent off a counter-
petition against the perplexing of our parish
with the provisions of a sanitary board. When
the inspector did come down and look over
our houses, of course we each of us told him
of such little private annoyances as we were
personally willing to endure rather than put
ourselves or our brother ratepayers to trouble
and expense. Mr. Brown, for example, who is
a grocer in Brick Street, said, very candidly,
"We are rather middlingly drained." What
did he mean by middlingly?" It is better
than it was, because we have had a new
drain made." A drain? Really a drain in
Cess-cum-Poolton! "Yes. It is a small
drain immediately under the shop-floor into
the surface channel of the street." Exactly.
That is the utmost done by any drain in the
Old Town. And your night soil? That "has
to be carried out about once a year." By
what door? "Through the shop." Among
your sugars, figs, and groceries? "We have
not had it done since I have been here, but it
is as great a nuisance as a person possibly
can have." Have you good water, Mr, Brown?
"Our pump water was very bad in quality,
but we have none at all now. We beg water
from the other side of the road; we never
could drink it when we had any, but used to
fetch from the church well, or anywhere."
What does your house cost you? "My rent
is twenty-two pounds and all rates. If I
could get good water and drainage I should
not care." And as it is, he does not care, for
he is one of the "gods together" on the hill
of Cess-cum-Poolton, "careless of mankind."
He leans upon the counter with his nose over
his little drain, and signs against the bother
of a sanitary movement.

Mr. Galloon, draper, of High Street, is
another of our let-ill-alone men. He signed
against the application of the Health Act,
and the inspector having visited him, found
that all the drainage of his side of High
Street, not poured out upon the road before
the houses, sinks into vaults under and near
them; the vaults are untrapped. The pump-
water tastes as though it had come fresh out
of a drain. "There is no other on the
premises. It is drunk because there is no
other." William Goose, poulterer in High
Street, also signed against the health nuisance.
He has a back yard only five feet square, a
cesspool on his premises and no drainage.
His wife said also, "We have no water at all,
we have to beg it. Our rent is eighteen
pounds a year, and taxes." Mr. Lever,
watchmaker, never used the water on his
premises for anything but washing the floor;
has never tasted it; says it looks "like
swill." All the waste of his house, liquid
and solid, goes into an open pit in the
yard. "I signed," he says, "both for and
against the Public Health Act." If he,
therefore, be one of the hill-gods, he shall
be our Janus.

It does not matter at what point you
examine the state of Cess-cum-Poolton;
nobody denies that we are filthy; we, who
are opposed to agitation, deny only that we
wish to be made clean. Our poison, like the
sunlight and the rain, is poured alike among
the rich and poor, the high and the low.
Squire Fitz-Canute's property in the market-
place consists of two thatched houses. The
inspector found that the pump was out of
order, and the water drawn by it "like liquid
manure." One of the tenants, Widow Rachel,
has lived there twenty years, and had a large
family of children. The last of them died
not many weeks ago; she now weeps for them
all. Two of the largest houses in our town
are the banks. At one bank, rented at fifty
pounds a year, no drains could be found, the
water was unfit for use, and the resident clerk
said, "We beg from the Fitz-Canute Arms."
At the other and larger bank, there is a resident
manager—not a petitioner against health
—who knew of no under-ground drainage;
there was a cesspool, he said, under the
kitchen, and there were two others in the
yard, close to wells. The effluvium from the
kitchen cesspool escaped through a grate
close to the kitchen door. The effect of this
position upon the bodies of the manager and
his family was, of course, if not to produce
disease, at least to make them highly predisposed
to take any epidemic that might come
in their way. While the inspectors' report
was being printed, it so happened that the
manager's family visited a house in which,
there was a boy ill with scarlet fever, and the
consequence was, that the manager, his wife,
and his three children—he had no more—
were then laid up in bed by serious attacks of
that complaint.

Mr. Sere is a very old gentleman, who lives
in a house immediately over two foul pools.
He is against all innovation, and with his own
trembling hand signed what he hoped might
be the death warrant of sanitary agitation.
He lives over against the garden wall of the
arch agitator, and is very much incensed
against him; is indignant also at a little
nuisance of his neighbour's, though he is on
good terms with a great one of his own.
"Mr. Zinzib's nuisance," exclaimed Mrs. Sere
to the inspector, with a righteous indignation,
"is very dreadful, it smells most horrid in the
summer." "My nuisance," said Mr. Zinzib,
"surely ought to be removed. Fetch in the