of them should
touch some cock and turn on the water. What a rain there would be, in
big streams and middling streams and tiny little streams, out of
millions of fixtures! No shower bath that was ever conceived or heard of
would compare with it. And yet--see how small and weak man is, after
all--it would not begin to equal an ordinary rain-storm.

Of water mains--or big pipes sunk in the streets to distribute the
Croton water from the reservoirs--there are no less than 715 miles, but
when the reader thinks how at every twenty-five feet smaller pipes
branch out of the mains to carry the water to every floor of every
building and sometimes to every office or room, he will see that of
smaller pipes there must be tens of thousands of miles, making up that
grand tree which is as much the "tree of life" of a great city as the
arterial system is the tree of life of each of our bodies. To carry off
the water that courses through all these thousands of miles of pipes we
have 456 miles of sewers--or much bigger pipes; some of which men can
walk through or even paddle a boat in.

[Illustration: AQUEDUCT TUNNEL UNDER THE HARLEM.]

One hundred and fifty years ago, when New York was considered rather an
ancient town, the people got their water for drinking from the
"collect," where the Tombs prison stands, and from the little springs
and streams that ran into that pond. A very few had wells, public or
private, near their houses. It was not until 1750 that pumps were set up
to make the getting of water easier. It will surprise the reader to know
that hundreds of these old wells still remain upon the island. Two or
three still have pumps affixed to them, and are used for giving drink to
horses, but the rest are covered over and, in most cases, their
existence is forgotten. It is not possible, even in case of war, when
our water supply might be cut off, that we will ever revert to the use
of these wells, for they yield a polluted water that is as bad to drink
as poison. Just before the Revolutionary War a man named Colles built a
little reservoir above the City Hall, but it yielded such bad water that
the people who could afford to do so bought water that was hawked in the
streets from carts. It was not until 1842, when we had a population of
350,000 souls, that New York got its water systematically and in such
plenty that mothers did not scold their children and Mayors did not
remonstrate with the people for wasting it.

[Illustrat