For they knew the germs of fever were around them everywhere-- They were told how very fatal was the family armchair; They were told that every morning when the slavey shook the mat Germs of death were scattered broadcast, and they shivered as they sat. They were told that death was lurking in the teapot and the tank, In the milk and in the water, and in everything they drank. In their terror ’gainst each other all the family did lean-- Peace of mind had gone for ever from the Browns of Walham Green. From that day they took the _Lancet_, every week they read it through, And their faces changed from rosy to a sickly yellow hue; And they could not eat their dinner, and they could not sleep at night, For with every Friday’s _Lancet_ came a new and awful fright. Germs of all the fell diseases that lie lurking for mankind Were, according to the _Lancet_, blown on every passing wind; “How on earth from all these dangers shall our carcasses we screen?” Cried, in throes of hourly anguish, all the Browns of Walham Green. They were happy when they knew not of the germs that lie in wait-- In the cottage of the lowly, in the castles of the great, In the street and in the parlour, in the train and in the ’bus. Round the corner germs are waiting, on the watch to spring on us. There are germs in clothes and customs--ah, the _Lancet’s_ eye is keen, It has even pierced the dustbin of the Browns of Walham Green! There, it told them, germs in thousands lay in waiting night and day, So they went and threw carbolic in a wildly lavish way. Then it warned them in a leader that they’d better all look out For a dreadful epidemic that came down the waterspout; Up they went upon the housetop and poured quarts of Condy down, Which they carried up in buckets--Mr., Miss, and Mrs. Brown-- And the neighbours stood and wondered what the dickens it could mean, At the gath’ring on the housetop of the Browns of Walham Green. Every week came other terrors, every week their fears grew worse, Till they felt their lives a burthen, till they felt their home a curse; And they sat around the table with a look of nervous dread, So upset by fears of dying that they wished that they were dead. And when they all were turning to mere bags of skin and bone, And all the sound they uttered was a deep sepulchral groan, Up rose young Tom, the eldest--a youth of seventeen-- And seized and flung the _Lancet_ right out on Walham Green.