"Yer don't? then I'll tell yer. A cause we're a top of the house in the
first place, and next place yer'll die here six months sooner nor if yer
worked in the room below. Aint that logic and science, Orator?" appealing
to Crossthwaite.
"Why?" asked I.
"A cause you get all the other floors' stinks up here as well as your
own. Concentrated essence of man's flesh, is this here as you're a
breathing. Cellar workroom we calls Rheumatic Ward, because of the damp.
Ground-floor's Fever Ward--them as don't get typhus gets dysentery, and
them as don't get dysentery gets typhus--your nose'd tell yer why if you
opened the back windy. First floor's Ashmy Ward--don't you hear 'um now
through the cracks in the boards, a puffing away like a nest of young
locomotives? And this here most august and upper-crust cockloft is the
Conscrumptive Hospital. First you begins to cough, then you proceeds
to expectorate--spittoons, as you see, perwided free gracious for
nothing--fined a kivarten if you spits on the floor--
"Then your cheeks they grows red, and your nose it grows thin,
And your bones they stick out, till they comes through your skin:
"and then, when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear shivering bare
backs of the hairystocracy--
"Die, die, die,
Away you fly,
Your soul is in the sky!
"as the hinspired Shakspeare wittily remarks.
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