from being thoroughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you
will know when you are older, a very hot-bed of disease. And they
shall have other comforts, and even luxuries, these public
lavatories; and be made, in time, graceful and refining, as well
as merely useful. Nay, we will even, I think, have in front of
each of them a real fountain; not like the drinking-fountains--
though they are great and needful boons--which you see here and
there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to a great
deal of expensive stone: but real fountains, which shall leap,
and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle; and fill the place with life,
and light, and coolness; and sing in the people's ears the
sweetest of all earthly songs--save the song of a mother over her
child--the song of 'The Laughing Water.'"

"But will not that be a waste?"

"Yes, my boy. And for that very reason, I think we, the people,
will have our fountains; if it be but to make our governments, and
corporations, and all public bodies and officers, remember that
they all--save Her Majesty the Queen--are our servants, and not we
theirs; and that we choose to have water, not only to wash with,
but to play with, if we like. And I believe--for the world, as
you will find, is full not only of just but of generous souls--
that if the water-supply were set really right, there would be
found, in many a city, many a generous man who, over and above his
compulsory water-rate, would give his poor fellow-townsmen such a
real fountain as those which ennoble the great square at
Carcasonne and the great square at Nismes; to be 'a thing of
beauty and a joy for ever.'"