A MOdel Overseer.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 583, 17 March 1891, Page 3

A MOdel Overseer.

They wanted an Overseer of Works at Manawa! u, and there was a genius who wanted the bidet. This is how he fired off his ammunition at the unfortunate Council : — “ My Testimony.—l was educated at the Royal Nitval and King’s College, and was, by my father, intended for the Navy, but, ci:cumstances preventing, my nomination was cance led, and in a few years after I entered a London bank. In the meantime I had become acquainted with all kinds of common adulterations, and their tests, and was perfectly familiar with the Act of Pailiament of 1875 for the suppression of all wholesale adulterations by making it a criminal offence. As regards the superintendence of pipe laying for sanitary purposes, etc., my knowledge is principally theoretical, albeit I should very readily detect a mistake in the geometric line, if ore were being peipetrated within my observation. The classic rectilinear alexandrine which, driven from poetry, appears to have taken rtf age in the stercorary trenches of the gieat Parisian city, is familiar to me ; as also is the drainage of mines where pumps are applied on the utmost vast scale. Of course the pub.ic health depends much upon its sanitary measures. I have attended lectures upon ‘ Mephist ’ at school, and have wandered oyer the great drains of Paris, with Victor Hugo for my guide, but I have never learned so much of the value of disinfectants as I acquired during my short stay in windy Wellington, where it blew little, or swampy Napier, when it blew less, and that seaward. At both places I have tried coffee, charcoal, etc., to absorb the effluvia. I have fumigated my rooms with acetate of lead and nitric acid, but to little purpose, and then I have wished to inspect the drains, swamps, and cesspools, and report upon their sanitary condition to their respective councils. Fiat justitia ruat coelum ? lam now applying to you, may I hope with success ? ”