eral in it is eaten up by certain germs or bacteria and the liquid that is left is harmless and trickles away into the earth to rejoin the "ground water."

We sometimes speak of "Mother Earth" and I like to think of the earth in that way. She is like a great, kind mother who takes everything that might harm or annoy us and sets her tiny servants, the bacteria, to work so that it becomes harmless or even helpful. She can take the sewage from a great city and turn it into sparkling water to feed the underground springs and to nourish the trees and plants. All she asks is that we do our part and work hand in hand with her.

SEWAGE

What can you do to prevent the beautiful places near your home being spoiled by rubbish?

How long does history teach us, that men have tried to keep their cities free from garbage? What was the Roman law about garbage disposal? Tell what you think of how people in the old days got rid of their house wastes.

How did sewers come to be made?

What facts can you tell about the greatest Roman sewer-about its age, how it was built, its strange history?

Show by the history of the Memphis yellow fever epidemic, how this calamity led to a National Board of Health. How was Memphis made a healthful city? What effect did this work in Memphis have on the water supplies of other large cities?

When is it safe, and when is it not safe, to dump sewage in the ocean? What can be done to make it safe to dump sewage into lakes? Into rivers?

Try to explain how sewage may be purified and safely disposed of in cities that have no bodies of water near by.

In which of the locations described in the last three questions do you live? Give reasons why you think the sewage of your town is well or badly disposed of.

Show by a picture, how a septic tank is made. Now explain how useful bacteria helps it work? Where should such septic tanks be used?

CHAPTER XVI

REFUSE

THE disposal of the sewage from the sinks, bathrooms and kitchens of a city is easier than the question of what to do with the garbage, ashes, tin cans, old bottles and other rubbish.

As I said, in Rome it was the custom for each house to dump its rubbish at a certain distance from the city wall, and in many country places in America each family still sees to its own rubbish, feeding the garbage to the pigs or chickens, or perhaps burying it, and dumping the ashes and other refuse in some out of the way spot. Sometimes the ashes are used for making paths and for filling in hollows and swamps. Too often, however, rubbish is just dumped anywhere and becomes an eyesore. There is no need of this, for with a little thought rubbish can be properly cared for. If the garbage is buried, it must be covered deeply enough not to attract flies or cats and dogs. Often a better way is to dry the garbage in a wire basket. fitted into the fire place or stove pipe or even in the oven -then it can be burned.

Papers, unless they are sold to a dealer, can be burned. Every family that has to dispose of its own refuse should have a large wire basket in which rags, papers, partly dried garbage, etc., can be burned outdoors. Ashes, unless used for paths or filling in, and other rubbish should be hauled to some suitable place and covered with a thin layer of earth.

As the country road grows into a village street and the village street into a city thoroughfare, the problem of keeping it clean and attractive becomes still more difficult and important. In the city, the streets are in constant use by thousands of people. The streets are not merely used to get from one place to another, as they are in the country. They form the meeting-place and play

ground, the center for transacting business, talking politics and paying visits, the evening promenade for the young people and playground for the children. It is absolutely necessary that the streets should not be littered with garbage, dirt and refuse, so that we may not carry street dirt into our houses on our clothing and shoes, so that food carried through the street may not be covered with dust, and so that we may enjoy playing, walking, or even eating on the sidewalks, as they do abroad.

Many cities do, in a wholesale style, what country families do in a small way-they get rid of their refuse

by dumping it. Sometimes, if the city is situated on the shore, the refuse is loaded onto scows and carried out to sea, where it is dumped. This is satisfactory if the load is not dumped too soon. Many a beautiful bathing beach is made ugly and unpleasant by floating bits of garbage and refuse carried in by the tide. Some beaches near New York have been almost ruined in this way.

Inland cities often fill in land that is marshy, or has been quarried out, by dumping on it the mixed garbage and rubbish or the rubbish alone. These dumps, however, are very ugly to look at, often smell very unpleasant and frequently form a fine breeding place for flies. Dumping refuse, either in the ocean or on land, is a very poor way of getting rid of it.

There are really only two good ways of disposing of

garbage and rubbish in cities. One is to burn them. In some cities the garbage is not kept separate from the ashes and refuse and so, being mixed with ashes, paper, etc., will burn very well. These cities can burn all their refuse in a great central building and by means of this fire, steam or electricity can be formed and sold, so that the refuse itself helps to pay for the expense of carting and collecting. In the city of Minneapolis, the burning of the refuse provides steam to heat the hospital and workhouse buildings, and electricity to light thirty-one miles of streets. In Savannah, Georgia, the city used to pay about eighty dollars a day for running its pumping station at the water-works. Since it has burned its refuse, the steam runs the pumping station and it costs only about forty-six dollars a day to burn the refuse and run the pumps—a clear saving of more than $12,000 a year. And in addition, the city has all its refuse destroyed, free of cost.

In many cities, the garbage, ashes, and other refuse must be kept separate. As wet garbage unmixed with ashes and paper will not burn easily, some other way must be found. This method is called "reduction" because by cooking and drying, the garbage is reduced to two substances, grease and fertilizer. Both of these can be made to help pay for the cost of collecting and reducing the garbage.

The war taught us all how foolish we had been to throw good food into the garbage pail and to dump tinfoil, bottles, shoes and other useful things into the trash barrel. American cities today are much less wasteful than they were eight years ago, and every one of us should do his part in helping to keep up the thrift habit.