The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1877-08-05

| Olu Norlu IOr the prOtectlOn OF ciues,
towns and whole districts of country from
the ravages of the neighboring dragon.
Commonly the dragon had his home in some
famous marsh hard by, and, issuing from
time to time, under the influence OF an
| urgent appetite or the "pure cussedness
Of an evil nature. he preyed upon
the people, and those who kept out OF
reach of his teeth persisted by thousands
from The more sweep of his pestilential
breath. No wonder that the hardy fellows
who went out and baited and slew tough
customers of this sort passed into the my
thology of the neighborhood as demigods to
be worshipped for ages, and it is the greatest
of pities that this race has dwindled, If
even it has not become extinct. Peo-
pie who give their days and nights to
guessing at the hidden sense of these
fabulous histories are generally agreed
that these dragons are neither more nor
less than poetical personification OF
the deadly effects upon the people OF some
famous pestiferous marsh, and that the hero
pictured as the slayer of the evil thus person
fled in frighttul form simply got the bet
ter of the deadly influences by draining the
marsh, so that it was no longer pesti-
lent congregation Of vapors; no longer
vile source Of poisonous gases; no
longer destructive agency OF incalculable
power, but a pleasant, arabic district, which
the people might contemplate with as
much satisfaction as they would the dead
body of dragon who had really eaten up
their children. II this is not the real sig
niicsnce Of the dragon myth it should be.
This Interpretation gives us fine anti
guilty for the useful practice of drainage.
1t indicates also that the poets recognized
with great accuracy the sources of certain
endemic diseases if they did not precisely
comprehend their nature. In short it
places the intelligence of antiquity in the
Old World on a far higher basis than any
one can claim to place the intelligence of
modern times, even in the New World.
There is scarcely a county in the
United States or a town or o village,
and certainly not great city, but is in
the utmost need of dragon slayer to
take up the great battle against the pesti-
lent gases that kill the people; yet they are
slow to recognize the truth. In fact, the
greatest, most urgent and most imperative
need of this country at the present moment
is drainage. Some people say that what the
country wants is more paper money and
others that the great need is specie payments.
Some believe that if means of preventing
strikes could be discovered it would be we'll
with us forever others that we should be
happy if we could put the whole organlza-
ton of society on a basis Of community in
the possession of property. There are
those who believe that what we want is
larger army, and others suppose that with
no army at all we should be permanently
saved from our friends. But the evils
glanced at in all these nostrums for
disturbed conditions will cure themselves
with time and compromising temper,
and that is true of many other evils that
afflict us physically, morally, mentally and
financially But the evil that will not cure
itself and is responsible for more real ills
than all the others together is the want of
drainage. Against that evil patience is not
only of no value, but it is mere soothing
powder that quiets the victim, while every
day and hour aggravates the dangers. For
this evil there is no remedy but that modern
type of the dragon slayer-the civil en-
gineer and his laborers armed with drainage
tools.
Both city and country have an equal in
terest in the drainage problem /; but its ap-
plications are different for EACH In the
country it mostly, yet not solely, relates to
the exclusion of miasmatic carnations from
the number of our unseen, but terribly
potent, foes. That it has not to deal exclu-
sively with miasmatic troubles, even
in the rural districts, will be ap-
parent from moments consideration
of the relations of the outhouses to
one another in country houses, and
more conspicuously in country hotels of
summer resort. Many of these, frequented
by large numbers of persons in the hot sea-
son, become almost like little cities, yet
their sewerage receives scarcely any atten-
ton. In the comparatively small district
covered by the hotels at Long Branch there
is crowded at one time in the summer a
population Of from eight to ten thousand
persons and the water supply for that
public was, until this year, mostly drawn
from wells dug in the sandy soil ut
little distance from other excavations
that received the discharge of water closets.
1t was impossible that the we'll water should
not be contaminated by percolaion from
the closets, and virulent disease was the
consequence. Now water is drawn from q
| remote district Evils of this nature exist
in greater or less degree in all parts of the
country. But the great scourge of
rural life in this country is malaria
for which thorough drainage is the
only remedy. In all new countries
malarious diseases are the common scourge,
for the earth, filled with the elements Of de-