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7
it has reached to 38 per cent. In the Western
division of the City it has not been greater than 7
per cent., and in the Eastern it has been only 3 per
cent.
This tells us that there are some places where the
mortality is yet high; where in fact a cloud of death
is always hanging; where the vitality of the people
is slowly sapped, and where disease makes easy
conquest. It is not enough that these places are
the continual haunts of such endemic maladies as
phthisis, fever, and the other putrid class, but
often they become the seats of stronger pestilence.
There it is that the powers of sanitary science must
be zealously applied; for it is there the very dirt
ferments, and the air becomes envenomed; and yet
it is still a question how these powers are to be
applied, for most of the denizens of these plaguenests
have but little instinct for self-improvement.
If to-day you give them the appliances
for cleanliness and ordinary decency, to-morrow
they will abuse them, and nothing can be more
disheartening than the ill success of all your
efforts to improve the character of such dismal
dens. And yet these efforts must still be used,
and perseveringly; for bad as is the physical
state of these places, the moral state is worse;
and children grow up to perpetuate the vices
which ignorance has engendered. That which
is wanted, therefore, is some means of touching