uch as to ruffle a naturally serene temper, and
when he finds it hard work to make both ends meet, and sees how gaily
young fellows spend their money--how he drives them from one public to
another, and from one place of amusement to another--and in what
questionable society,--one can scarce wonder if now and then cabby is a
little sour, and if his language be as rough as his thoughts. Strange
tales can he tell. A friend of the writer's once hired a chaise to take
him across the country; their way led them through a turnpike-gate, and,
to my friend's horror, the driver never once pulled up to allow him to
pay the toll. My friend expostulated; as the toll had to be paid, he
thought the better plan was to pay it at once. "Oh, it's all right,"
said Jehu, smiling, "they know me well enough--I am the man wot drives
the prisoners, and prisoners never pay." Our London cabby is often
similarly employed, and, as he rushes by, we may well speculate as to the
nature and mission of his fare. Cabby so often drives rogues that we
cannot wonder if in time he becomes a bit of a rogue himself.

CHAPTER XIX.
FREE DRINKING FOUNTAINS.

Till lately the London poor had no means of getting water but the pump or
the public-house. Of the latter we can have but a poor opinion, nor all
the former much better. It appears that "the London pumps can never be
otherwise than dangerous sources of supply; the porous sod from which
they suck being that into which our cesspools and leaky drains discharge
a great part of their fluid--sometimes even a great part of their solid
contents, and in which, till very recently, all our interments have taken
place. It is a soil which consequently abounds with putrid and
putrefiable matter. The water derived from it invariably contains
products of organic decomposition, more or less oxidised; and it is a
mere chance, beyond the power of water-drinkers to measure or control,
whether that oxidation shall at all times be so incomplete as to have
left the water still capable of a very dangerous kind of fermentation."
We are further told that, "the shallow well water receives the drainage
of Highgate Cemetery, of numerous burial grounds, and of innumerable
cesspools which percolate the soil on the London side of the Cemetery,
and flow towards the Metropolis. . . . That the pump-water also becomes
contaminated with the residual liquors of manufacturing processes. . . .
That a man who habitually makes use