terrible. From these privies a drain passed under the surface of the
muddy, sloppy yard, to the margin of the building, where a descent of
perhaps four feet was obtained, at the bottom of which the basement floor
was level with the windows, giving a sickly light, but no air or
ventilation whatever, to the inhabitants of the cellar. But the worst is
yet to be told. The drain from the privies connecting with the sewer in
the street had a _man-hole_, which was open, at the place where the yard
was broken for a descent into this infernal cellar. This man-hole was
about four feet wide and three feet deep, forming a small table for a
cataract of night soil and other fecal matter, which poured over this
artificial table in a miniature and loathsome Niagara and into a cesspool
at the bottom, and from thence was conducted under the rotten boards of
the cellar through a brick drain, a few inches below the board flooring,
to the main sewer in the street. The bottom of the windows in this house
are on a dead level with this horrid cesspool, so that a man sitting on a
chair at the window would not have only the odor, but also the view of
this loathsome matter circulating at his feet in the pool below. We
entered the back cellar after knocking at the door a few minutes, and a
man, poverty-stricken and wretched in appearance, of the laboring class,
came with a candle to let us in. The room was in a filthy condition, ten
by twenty-two and a half feet, with a ceiling of six feet three inches
elevation from the floor. A woman, wretched and woe-begone as the man,
rose suddenly from a dirty bed at the back of the room, and bade us
welcome civilly enough, in her night clothing, which was scanty.

"'And are yees the Boord of Helth, sure. Well it isn't much we have to
show thin, but yees can see it all without any charge at all, at all.'

"'How much rent do you pay here?' asked the writer of the man with the
candle.

"'Is it rint ye mane? Nyah, its $6 a munth, shure, and glad to get it,
and if we don't pay it, it's the little time we'll get from Burke, but
out on the street wid us, like pigs, and the divil resave the bit of
sattysfaction we'll get from him than ye would from the Lord
Palmershtown, Nyah!'

"'How do you live?'

"'Shure, I put in coal now and thin, whin I can get it to put, and that's
not often, God knows, alanna!'

"'How much do you earn?'

"'Is it earn d'ye say? Sometimes fifty cents a day, sometimes two
dol