A great deal of the filthy rubbish accumulated in a year is pitched into the street, often through the windows; and what the ashman on his daily round does not remove is left to be trampled to powder, in which form it steals back into the houses from which it was so lately removed.
The City Fathers provide soap and water for the slums, in the form of excellent schools, kindergartens, and branch libraries.

And there they stop: at the curbstone of the people's life.

They cleanse and discipline the children's minds, but their bodies they pitch into the gutter.

For there are no parks and almost no playgrounds in the Harrison Avenue district,--in my day there were none,--and such as there are have been wrenched from the city by public-spirited citizens who have no offices in City Hall.

No wonder the ashman is not more thorough: he learns from his masters.
It is a pity to have it so, in a queen of enlightened cities like Boston.