In the modern plastic condition of both ideals and materials this is all changed.

In any city well known to my readers how many streets bear the same aspect as five years ago?
In any suburban village made familiar by the trolley how many houses are the same as five years ago?
Even if their outward aspect is not changed, that worst of all havocs, new plumbing, has been put in.

The installation of neither furnace nor plumbing is accomplished once for all; at the end of ten years at most repairs or replacement must be made on penalty of loss of health.
As the community grows in wisdom and in knowledge it makes sanitary regulations more stringent notwithstanding the fact that the increase in expense bears most heavily on the small householder with a family whose need is out of proportion to the income.

Many a parent who grieves the loss of his child would gladly have paid a reasonable sum for repairs, but would have been in the poor debtors' court if he had allowed the plumbers to enter his house.

The new laws made since he bought his house require diametrically opposite things, and the old fittings must all be torn out as well as four times as costly put in.
It is a sad fact that the advantages of all modern sanitation are so often denied to those who need and who would appreciate them.