The town, when we arrived, was a bouquet of assorted and nasty smells,
of which the authorities seemed proud. We cleaned up the streets by
running a little artificial river down the gutter. Mr. Berry had the
chief of the police sacked and instituted a sort of sanitary vigilance
committee. We took over the local but very primitive sewage works--a
field into which all the filth of the town was drained.
The slaughter-house was discovered. It was an old wooden shed built
over the lower end of the stream which washed the village from end to
end, draining successively the typhus barracks, the baths, and all the
hospitals. The shed itself was old and worm-eaten. The walls were caked
with the blood of years, yet the meat was always hung against them after
having been well soused in the filthy water. Mr. Berry decided to build
a new one: some of the money was subscribed through Mr. Blease by the
Liverpool Liberal Club; the rest Mr. Berry paid himself. At once the
state began to quarrel with the commune as to the ownership of the
proposed treasure.
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