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No inhabitants of Curzon Street, Great Stanhope Street, or South Audley Street would dream of touching any water but that from the famous Chesterfield House spring. In 1867 there was a serious outbreak of Asiatic cholera in London, and my father determined to have the water of the celebrated spring analysed. There were loud protests at this: what, analyse the finest drinking-water in England!

If, as in many towns, the supply of drinking-water for many families comes from the town pump or pumps, the same principles must be attended to. A well in Golden Square, London, was noted for its especially bright and sparkling water, so much so that people sent from long distances to secure it.

And to consummate, as it were, his threats of divine punishment so soon to be visited on the degenerate city, Jeremiah is directed to buy an earthenware bottle, such as was used by the peasants to hold their drinking-water, and to summon the elders and priests of Jerusalem to the southwestern corner of the city, and to throw before their feet the bottle and shiver it in pieces, as a significant symbol of the approaching fall of the city, to be destroyed as utterly as the shattered jar.

"She had on a sunbonnet that hid her face and she got within ten feet of me before she spoke she asked for a pail of drinking-water from the tank the creek was muddy from a recent rain. "Just as soon as she spoke, I knew it was Rachel, but I controlled myself, for others were within hearing.

For some days nothing more was seen of the two Dinosaurs, the King being probably occupied, in the depths of the jungle, with the nursing of his wrath and his hurts. The herds of the Dinoceras, meanwhile, kept to their meadows, having better drinking-water in a slow stream which traversed the pastures than in the brackish tide of the lagoon.

In the streets there are some men carrying drinking-water for sale, because it is hot walking about and people get thirsty. Others will be selling sweet-stuff made of sugar, which everyone likes. Others wait about ready to write letters for people who cannot write for themselves, and there are always many beggars.

"And look'ee master, so they be, for I ha' watered mine wi' Orson's drinking-water, while he snored, look'ee " "So Jenkyn do be thief as well, master " "Nay," said Beltane smiling, and seating himself on Orson's bed, "stint now your angers and tell me who gave ye flowers so fair?" "Master, she do be an angel!"

The women toil at carrying their scant supply of drinking-water from great distances during a part of the day, and in the evening they spin industriously by their firesides or upon their doorsteps, as the season will have it. It is an old life, the same to-day as a thousand years ago, and perhaps as it will be a thousand years hence.

But all the details of life in this country are microscopical, not only among the poor, but among those whose business is conducted in lakhs. I have been told of a certain well- known, wealthy mill-owner who, when a water Brahmin at a railway station had supplied him and all his attendants with drinking-water, was seen to fumble in his waistband, and reward the useful man with one copper pie.

"A good deal of it does seem to me mighty funny, but when they tell me to boil drinking-water to kill the bugs in it, and show me pictures of the bugs they take with the microscope, I don't snort just because my grandfather didn't know about those things and lived to be eighty-two and then died from being kicked by a colt.