misplaced and
inharmonious elements for a time in lead or iron pipes, while they grow
more hostile, occasionally escaping by violence or stealth into our
chambers, and then with many nice contrivances and much perishable
machinery we try to wash them away with a bucket of water. Not to carry
them where they will do any good, not to put them out of existence, but
simply to hide them: to send them out of our immediate sight, and very
likely into some greater mischief. The system is radically wrong, and
while many of its existing evils may be averted, they cannot all be
removed till we make our attacks from a different base. Improving
sewers, like strengthening prison walls, is a good thing if the
institutions remain; to prevent the need of maintaining them would be
better still. Three-fourths of the solid wastes that proceed from
human dwellings--scraps of food, waste paper, worthless vegetables,
worn-out utensils, bones, weeds, old boots and shoes, whatever
unmanageable and unnamable rubbish appears--ought to be at once
consumed by fire, for which purpose a small cremating furnace should be
found in every house. A similar trial by fire would reduce a large part
of the liquids and semi-liquids to solid form to be also consumed, and
the rest, absorbed by dry earth or ashes, could easily be transported
to the barren fields that await the intelligence and power of man to
transform them into blooming gardens.

"Of the usual modes of bringing water to our houses to wash away these
things I know but little, because there is but little to be known.
Complications and mysteries are not to my taste. I find no satisfaction
in overthrowing a man of straw, and am comparatively indifferent to the
rival claims of patentees and manufacturers, except as they promise
good material, faithful workmanship and moderate prices.

"The one thing needful, if we adopt the hydraulic method of carrying
away these waste substances, is a smooth cast-iron pipe running from
the ground outside the house in through the lower part and up and out
through the roof. It should be open at both ends, and so free from
obstruction that a cat, a chimney-swallow or a summer breeze could pass
through it without difficulty. I would, however, put screens over the
open ends to keep out the cats and the swallows. The purifying breezes
should blow through in summer and winter without let or hindrance, and
to promote their circulation I would, if possible, place the pipe