here for thirty years, were both of them, as far as I could see,
to be traced to filthy water having got into the poor folks'
wells. Water, you must remember, just as it is life when pure, is
death when foul. For it can carry, unseen to the eve, and even
when it looks clear and sparkling, and tastes soft and sweet,
poisons which have perhaps killed more human beings than ever were
killed in battle. You have read, perhaps, how the Athenians, when
they were dying of the plague, accused the Lacedaemonians outside
the walls of poisoning their wells; or how, in some of the
pestilences of the Middle Ages, the common people used to accuse
the poor harmless Jews of poisoning the wells, and set upon them
and murdered them horribly. They were right, I do not doubt, in
their notion that the well-water was giving them the pestilence:
but they had not sense to see that they were poisoning the wells
themselves by their dirt and carelessness; or, in the case of poor
besieged Athens, probably by mere overcrowding, which has cost
many a life ere now, and will cost more. And I am sorry to tell
you, my little man, that even now too many people have no more
sense than they had, and die in consequence. If you could see a
battle-field, and men shot down, writhing and dying in hundreds by
shell and bullet, would not that seem to you a horrid sight?
Then--I do not wish to make you sad too early, but this is a fact
that everyone should know--that more people, and not strong men
only, but women and little children too, are killed and wounded in
Great Britain every year by bad water and want of water together,
than were killed and wounded in any battle which has been fought
since you were born. Medical men know this well. And when you
are older, you may see it for yourself in the Registrar-General's
reports, blue-books, pamphlets, and so on, without end."