oo heavy for him--because, to keep everything in order among
dirty, careless, and often drunken people, there must be officers with
lawful authority--water-policemen we will call them--who can enter
people's houses when they will, and if they find anything wrong with the
water, set it to rights with a high hand, and even summon the people who
have set it wrong. And that is a power which, in a free country, must
never be given to the servants of any private company, but only to the
officers of a corporation or of the government.

And what shall we do with the rest of the water?

Well, we shall have, I believe, so much to spare that we may at least do
this--In each district of each city, and the centre of each town, we may
build public baths and lavatories, where poor men and women may get their
warm baths when they will; for now they usually never bathe at all,
because they will not--and ought not, if they be hard-worked folk--bathe
in cold water during nine months of the year. And there they shall wash
their clothes, and dry them by steam; instead of washing them as now, at
home, either under back sheds, where they catch cold and rheumatism, or
too often, alas! in their own living rooms, in an atmosphere of foul
vapour, which drives the father to the public-house and the children into
the streets; and which not only prevents the clothes from being
thoroughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you will know when you
are older, a very hot-bed of disease. And they shall have other
comforts, and even luxuries, these public lavatories; and be made, in
time, graceful and refining, as well as merely useful. Nay, we will
even, I think, have in front of each of them a real fountain; not like
the drinking-fountains--though they are great and needful boons--which
you see here and there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to
a great deal of expensive stone: but real fountains, which shall leap,
and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle; and fill the place with life, and
light, and coolness; and sing in the people's ears the sweetest of all
earthly songs--save the song of a mother over her child--the song of "The
Laughing Water."

But will not that be a waste?

Yes, my boy. And for that very reason, I think we, the people, will have
our fountains; if it be but to make our governments, and corporations,
and all public bodies and officers, remember that they all--save Her
Majesty the Queen--are our servants; and not we