“The sanitary improvement in my district during the progress of my inspection was plainly visible. Exceedingly filthy places, overflowing cesspools, and privies, which were numerous in my first visit, were suddenly cleaned. Often upon my second visit, with paper and pencil in my hand to sketch the filthy scene, I would find the quarters cleaned and whitewashed, and the air, instead of being laden with disagreeable odors, would be comparatively pure and wholesome. Many of these sudden transitions were from fear of the presumption that my inspection had some official authority; but the greater part were brought about by explaining to the people the necessity of cleanliness. [Illustration: PLAN OF A TYPICAL FEVER-NEST, 1865] “Pools of filthy water from obstructions at the street corners, and accumulated along the gutters, would quickly disappear, when the people would be convinced of the deleterious effect upon the public health. It will be well for the inhabitants of New York City, and especially for those of this section, when there shall be laws not only to compel them to keep their houses and surroundings clean and free from the effluvia resulting from vegetable and animal decomposition, but to prevent the overcrowding of tenant-houses, where fatal diseases are generated, and where death walks around.” [Sidenote: How to Improve the People] The tenant-house population is susceptible of infinite improvement, when once rescued from the reign of filth, and restored to a pure atmosphere and clean homes. The poor live in these wretched tenements because they are compelled to, and not from choice. They universally complain that they cannot escape from domestic and street filth. It surrounds and pervades their habitations, always accumulating, and never diminishing. The most tidy house-wife, compelled to live in the midst of this ocean of rubbish, with all its degrading associations, soon finds the same level, and from this she can be rescued only by giving her again a clean and well-ordered home. And such a home every municipal government is bound to secure to the poorest and humblest citizen. Let the landlord be compelled to keep his house in good repair, supply it with an abundance of pure water, connect the privy with the sewer, open free ventilation, afford means for removal of garbage, and then keep a careful oversight of his tenants, enforcing cleanliness. If this were done, the tenant-house people would immediately improve, and the death-rate, if we may judge from other cities, would fall one-fourth. Again, the cellar population can be removed from their subterranean abodes, and placed in better homes. Liverpool has solved this problem for us.