an, with high-combed hair, self-conscious
gloves, and very broad, clean-shaven lower jaw, how the peculiar
formation of delta lands, by which they drain away from the larger
watercourses, instead of into them, had made the swamp there in the rear
of the town, for more than a century, "the common dumping-ground and
cesspool of the city, sir!"

Some of the students nodded convincedly to the speaker; some looked
askance at the Arkansan, who put one forearm meditatively under his
coat-tail; some looked through the window over the regions alluded to,
and some only changed their pose and looked around for a mirror.

The Doctor spoke on. Several of his hearers were really interested in
the then unusual subject, and listened intelligently as he pointed
across the low plain at hundreds of acres of land that were nothing but
a morass, partly filled in with the foulest refuse of a semi-tropical
city, and beyond it where still lay the swamp, half cleared of its
forest and festering in the sun--"every drop of its waters, and every
inch of its mire," said the Doctor, "saturated with the poisonous
drainage of the town!"

"I happen," interjected a young city student; but the others bent their
ear to the Doctor, who continued:--

"Why, sir, were these regions compactly built on, like similar areas in
cities confined to narrow sites, the mortality, with the climate we
have, would be frightful."

"I happen to know," essayed the city student; but the Arkansan had made
an interrogatory answer to the Doctor, that led him to add:--

"Why, yes; you see the houses here on these lands are little, flimsy,
single ground-story affairs, loosely thrown together, and freely exposed
to sun and air."

"I hap--," said the city student.

"And yet," exclaimed the Doctor, "Malaria is king!"

He paused an instant for his hearers to take in the figure.

"Doctor, I happen to"--

Some one's fist from behind caused the speaker to turn angrily, and the
Doctor resumed:--

"Go into any of those streets off yonder,--Treme, Prieur, Marais. Why,
there are often ponds under the houses! The floors of bedrooms are
within a foot or two of these ponds! The bricks of the surrounding
pavements are often covered with a fine, dark moss! Water seeps up
through the sidewalks! That's his realm, sir! Here and there among the
residents--every here and there--you'll see his sallow, quaking subjects
dragging about their work or into and out of their beds, until a fear