"A FILTHY COMMUNITY."

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11598, 5 December 1899, Page 3

"A FILTHY COMMUNITY."

TO THE EDITOR. << ? IK '~■"■ ,beS most sincerely to support It. A. F. in his assertion that you " are a filthy community." As the express approached the town one evening lately, and plunged into the fetid vapour of the place, one could not help recalling the classic words of the Otaco poet: " Dunedin fair, I smell thee now." To the sea with the sewage! You have other bad habits that need reforming besides the habit of polluting the bay. You keep -thousands of dogs—from the look of the pavements, a stranger would guess about half a million. You turn these clogs on to tho sidewalks to drop their filth. You also spit profusely on the sidewalks. These two sources of disease you tread, when dry, into a fine powder, which is blown into your clothes, your faces, especially into the faces of little children, down your throats, into your bread-carts, meal-carts, milk-carts ; into your meatsafes and mflkjuga ; you swallow it, cooked in your meat, and raw m your bread and milk. No wonder you are a hydatid community, a consumptive community.

You should put such a tax on dogs as would enable you to cleanse your sidewalks of their dangerous filth three or four times a clay; and you should stop spitting on the pavement. Your mothers should have taught "you these things.—l am, etc., Bosh Yisitoe.