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Earth closets, if carefully attended to, often emptied, and the receptacles cleaned out, can be safely employed even within doors; but in towns it is difficult to dispose of the refuse, and there must necessarily be a system of drainage for the purpose of taking off the surface water; it is thereupon found more economical to carry away all drainage together, and the water closet being but little trouble, and, if properly looked after, more cleanly in appearance, it is generally preferred, notwithstanding the great risks which are daily run in consequence of the chance of sewer-gas finding an entrance into the house by its means.
The jointing must be carefully made, and should be of cement or of well tempered clay, care being taken to wipe away all projecting portions from the inside of the pipes. A clear passage-way is of the utmost importance. Foul drains are the result of badly joined and irregularly laid pipes, wherein matter accumulates, which in time ferments and produces sewer-gas.
After the hundreds of sanitary tracts in which the deadliness of sewer-gas has been an axiom of faith, after the thousand-and-one deaths from it in the contemporary novel, it is grimly diverting to learn that sewer-gas may be welcomed without fear to our hearths and homes.
'Ever since he came home he has raised Cain generally, with his carpenters, and masons, and painters, and stewing about water-pipes, and sewer-gas, and smells. He's mad as a March hare, and if I can't get rid of him by going to Washington, I'll do it in some other way. You know he is crazy, and so do I, and I'll swear to it on a stack of Bibles as high as the house.
A girl came in the store yesterday to buy a satchet, and there wasn't anybody there but me, and I didn't know what it was, and I took down everything in the store pretty near, before I found it, and then I wouldn't have found it only the proprietor came in. The girl asked the proprietor if there wasn't a good deal of sewer-gas in the store, and he told me to go out and shake myself.
My boy, for illuminating purposes and economy combined, there's nothing in the world that begins with sewer-gas. And really, it don't cost a cent. You put in a good inferior article of plumbing, such as you find everywhere and add my decomposer, and there you are. Just use the ordinary gas pipes and there your expense ends. Think of it.
In houses it is astonishing how many instances occur of the water of butts, cisterns, and tanks, getting contaminated by leaking of pipes and other causes, such as the passage of sewer-gas through overflow-pipes, &c. Therefore all tanks and cisterns should be inspected regularly, and any accidental source of impurity must be looked out for.
Why, Major, in five years from now you won't see a house lighted with anything but sewer-gas. Every physician I talk to, recommends it; and every plumber." "But isn't it dangerous?" "O, yes, more or less, but everything is coal gas, candles, electricity there isn't anything that ain't." "It lights up well, does it?" "O, magnificently." "Have you given it a good trial?"
Colton supposed that none but members of his family knew of the safe at home, and why a robber should know must be made clear; so, wearing the same disguise, I called at the house one day and told the servant in charge that I had been sent to search for sewer-gas. I showed an order.
But they are spared the pain of foul smells, and possibly in this way they may incur some danger in civilised life through not being able to detect the escape of sewer-gas or of coal-gas into a house, or the putrid condition of ice-stored fish, birds, and meat.
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