rict to allow you a little
chloride of lime and whitewash."

And so the matter ended.

"You are a greater puzzle than ever to me, Thurnall," said Frank. "You
are always pretending to care for nothing but your own interest, and
yet here you have gone out of your way to incur odium, knowing, you
say, that your cause was all but hopeless."

"Well, I do it because I like it. It's a sort of sporting with your
true doctor. He blazes away at a disease where he sees one, as he
would at a bear or a lion; the very sight of it excites his organ of
destructiveness. Don't you understand me? You hate sin, you know.
Well, I hate disease. Moral evil is your devil, and physical evil is
mine. I hate it, little or big; I hate to see a fellow sick; I hate
to see a child rickety and pale; I hate to see a speck of dirt in the
street; I hate to see a woman's gown torn; I hate to see her stockings
down at heel; I hate to see anything wasted, anything awry, anything
going wrong; I hate to see water-power wasted, manure wasted, land
wasted, muscle wasted, pluck wasted, brains wasted; I hate neglect,
incapacity, idleness, ignorance, and all the disease and misery which
spring out of that. There's my devil; and I can't help it for the life
of me, going right at his throat, wheresoever I meet him!"

Lastly, rather to clear his reputation than in the hope of doing good,
Tom wrote up to London, and detailed the case to that much-calummated
body, the General Board of Health, informing them civilly, that the
Nuisances Removal Act was simply waste paper; that he could not get it
to bear at all on Aberalva; and that if he had done so, it would have
been equally useless, for the simple reason that it constituted the
offenders themselves judge and jury in their own case.

To which the Board returned for answer, that they were perfectly aware
of the fact, and deeply deplored the same: but that as soon as cholera
broke out in Aberalva, they should be most happy to send down an
inspector.

To which Tom replied courteously, that he would not give them the
trouble, being able, he trusted, to perform without assistance the not
uncommon feat of shutting the stable-door after the horse was stolen.

And so was Aberalva left "a virgin city," undefiled by Government
interference, to the blessings of that "local government," which
signifies, in plain English, the leaving the few to destroy themselves
and the many, by the unchecked exercise of the virtues of pr