Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 4, 2025
People take care of their surfaces and varnish them; every one is dressed as though just out of a band-box, washed, soaped, scraped, shaved, combed, waked, smoothed, rubbed, brushed, cleaned on the outside, irreproachable, polished as a pebble, discreet, neat, and at the same time, death of my life, in the depths of their consciences they have dung-heaps and cesspools that are enough to make a cow-herd who blows his nose in his fingers, recoil.
As we drove through the line of dung-heaps and liquid manure rising above what looked like barns, I was ill-prepared for the comfort and tidiness prevailing within. What a change when the door opened, and our neatly dressed entertainers ushered us into their dining-room! Here, looking on to a well-kept garden was a table spread with spotless linen, covers being laid as in a middle-class house.
"Ah," said he, "if I was a young gentleman, I should go down the north planting hedge, close to the dung-heaps; they do say there is a sight of snakes there; but in course you young gentlemen won't go, for as you're afraid of wopses, in course you won't like to go where there's snakes."
It was that time of the year, the turning-point of summer, when the crops of the present year are a certainty, when one begins to think of the sowing for next year, and the mowing is at hand; when the rye is all in ear, though its ears are still light, not yet full, and it waves in gray-green billows in the wind; when the green oats, with tufts of yellow grass scattered here and there among it, droop irregularly over the late-sown fields; when the early buckwheat is already out and hiding the ground; when the fallow lands, trodden hard as stone by the cattle, are half ploughed over, with paths left untouched by the plough; when from the dry dung-heaps carted onto the fields there comes at sunset a smell of manure mixed with meadow-sweet, and on the low-lying lands the riverside meadows are a thick sea of grass waiting for the mowing, with blackened heaps of the stalks of sorrel among it.
This man was too old and weak for regular work, and supported himself by removing manure with a hand-cart; the dung-heaps lay next door to his palace! Such are the various working-people's quarters of Manchester as I had occasion to observe them personally during twenty months.
The tetanus bacillus, which is a perfect anaërobe, is widely distributed in nature and can be isolated from garden earth, dung-heaps, and stable refuse. The spores, which are the active agents in producing tetanus, are highly resistant to chemical agents, retain their vitality in a dry condition, and even survive boiling for five minutes.
Whether the old soul that her young ladyship had taken such a fancy to that was how Blencorn the coachman and Benjamin the coachboy thought of her really enjoyed the strange experience of gliding over smooth roads flanked by matchless woodlands or primeval moorland; cropless Autumn fields or pastures of contented cattle; through villages of the same mind about the undesirableness of change that had been their creed for centuries, with churches unconscious of judicious restoration and an unflawed record of curfews; by farms with all the usual besetting sins of farms, black duck-slush and uncaptivating dung-heaps; cattle no persuasion weighs with; the same hen that never stops the same dissertation on the same egg, the same cock that has some of the vices of his betters, our male selves to wit whether the said old soul really enjoyed all this, who can say?
Wells should be covered; a good coping put round to prevent substances being washed down; the distances from cess-pools and dung-heaps should be carefully noted; no sewer should be allowed to pass near a well. The same precautions should be taken with springs. In the case of rivers, we must consider if contamination can result from the discharge of fecal matters, trade refuse, &c."
The next class that attracted my attention was the numerous collection of well-starved dogs, who were indulging in all the luxury of extreme poverty on the endless dung-heaps. There, too, sat the industrious citizen, basking in the sunshine of his shop-door, and gathering in the flock which is so bountifully reared on his withered tribe of children.
All was fish that came to Tam's net: tadpoles, newts, and stickleback from the ponds, beetles from the dung-heaps, green crabs from the sea-shore nay, even in time such larger prizes as hedgehogs, moles, and nestfuls of birds. Nothing delighted him so much as to be out in the fields, hunting for and taming these his natural pets.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking