Outside a few affluent neighborhoods, the citizens of which clubbed together to build private sewers, the cesspool was in general use, while domestic drainage emptied into the roadside gutters.

These were made passable, at crossings, by stepping stones, about the bases of which passed interesting armadas of potato peelings, floating, upon wash days, in water having the fine Mediterranean hue which comes from diluted blueing.

Everybody seemed to find the entire system adequate; for, it was argued, the hilly contours of the city caused the drainage quickly to be carried off, while as for typhoid and mosquitoes--well, there had always been typhoid and mosquitoes, just as there had always been these open gutters.

It was all quite good enough.
Then the fire.
And then the upbuilding of the city--not only of the acres and acres comprising the burned section, in which streets were widened and skyscrapers arose where fire-traps had been--but outside the fire zone, where sewers were put down and pavements laid.

Nor was the change merely physical.