an's wife died of fever. He
soon married again; and the second wife also died of fever, within a year
from the time of marriage. His children were sick. He occupied the house
about two years. The wife of his successor was soon taken ill, and barely
escaped with her life. A physician then took the house. He married, and
his wife soon after died of fever. Another physician took the house, and
within a few months came near dying of erysipelas. He deserved it. The
house, meanwhile, received no treatment; the doctors, according to their
usual wont, even in their own families, were satisfied to deal with the
consequences, and leave the causes to do their worst.

"Next after the doctors, a school-teacher took the house, and made a few
changes, for convenience apparently, for substantially it remained the
same; for he, too, escaped as by the skin of his teeth. Finally, after the
foreclosure of many lives, the sickness and fatality of the property
became so marked, that it became unsalable. When at last sold, every sort
of prediction was made as to the risk of occupancy; but, by a thorough
attention to sanitary conditions, no such risks have been encountered."

These deaths were suicides,--ignorant ones, it is true, not one stopping
to think what causes lay at the bottom of such "mysterious dispensations."
But, just as surely as corn gives a crop from the seed sown, so surely
typhoid fever and diphtheria follow bad drainage or the drinking of
impure water.

Boiling such water destroys the germs of disease; but neither boiled water
nor boiled germs are pleasant drinking.

If means are too narrow to admit of the expense attendant upon making a
drain long enough and tight enough to carry off all refuse water to a safe
distance from the house, then adopt another plan. Remember that to throw
dirty water on the ground near a well, is as deliberate poisoning as if
you threw arsenic in the well itself. Have a large tub or barrel standing
on a wheelbarrow or small hand-cart; and into this pour every drop of
dirty water, wheeling it away to orchard or garden, where it will enrich
the soil, which will transform it, and return it to you, not in disease,
but in fruit and vegetables. Also see that the well has a roof, and, if
possible, a lattice-work about it, that all leaves and flying dirt may be
prevented from falling into it. You do not want your water to be a
solution or tincture of dead leaves, dead frogs and insects, or stray mice
o