s who supply the commodities of gas and water have
admission to the subways, and find it most easy and economical to keep
all that is under their charge in perfect repair. The sewers of the
houses run along the floors of the subways, and are built in brick.
They empty into three cross main sewers. They are trapped for each
house, and as the water supply is continuous, they are kept well
flushed. In addition to the house flushings there are special openings
into the sewers by which, at any time, under the direction of the
sanitary officer, an independent flushing can be carried out. The
sewers are ventilated into tall shafts from the mains by means of a
pneumatic engine.
The water-closets in the houses are situated on the middle and
basement floors. The continuous water-supply flushes them without
danger of charging the drinking water with gases emanating from the
closet; a danger so imminent in the present method of cisterns, which
supply drinking as well as flushing water.
As we walk the streets of our model city, we notice an absence of
places for the public sale of spirituous liquors. Whether this be a
voluntary purgation in goodly imitation of the National Temperance
League, the effect of Sir Wilfrid Lawson's Permissive Bill and most
permissive wit and wisdom, or the work of the Good Templars, we need
not stay to inquire. We look at the fact only. To this city, as to
the town of St. Johnsbury, in Vermont, which Mr. Hepworth Dixon has
so graphically described, we may apply the description Mr. Dixon has
written: 'No bar, no dram shop, no saloon defiles the place. Nor is
there a single gaming hell or house of ill-repute.' Through all the
workshops into which we pass, in whatever labour the men or women
may be occupied,--and the place is noted for its manufacturing
industry,--at whatever degree of heat or cold, strong drink is
unknown. Practically, we are in a total abstainers' town, and a man
seen intoxicated would be so avoided by the whole community, he would
have no peace to remain.
And, as smoking and drinking go largely together, as the two practices
were, indeed, original exchanges of social degradations between the
civilised man and the savage, the savage getting very much the worst
of the bargain, so the practices largely disappear together. Pipe and
glass, cigar and sherry-cobbler, like the Siamese twins, who could
only live connected, have both died out in our model city. Tobacco,
by far the most innoc
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