Pheugh! Doctors may talk, but—I've been for a walk, which they swear will keep down adiposity,

And preserve your liver from chill and shiver, or growing a shrivelled callosity.

So I put on my hat—for I am getting fat!— and I've been for a walk—in the City.

The result of that walk? Well my mouth is like chalk and my eyes feel all smarting and gritty;

I've got a sore throat from the matter afloat in the air. It may sound like a fable,

But I'm game for betting that London is getting one large and malodorous stable!!

Dear days of McAdam! If only we had 'em, with all disadvantages, back again!

Oh! to hear the rattle of well-shod cattle upon the old granite-laid track again.

But this wooden pavement, e'en after lavement is simple enslavement to nastiness,

For when it is dry 'tis foul dust in your eye, and when moist mere malodorous pastiness.

Oh, slip-sloppy Cabby, this Bouquet de Babylon sniffs of ammonia horridly,

And stable-dust flying is terribly trying when Phœbus is pouring down torridly!

My palate quite hot is, my larynx and glottis feel like an Augean Sahara,

I'm frantic with drouth, and the taste in my mouth is a mixed Malebolge and Marah.

The water-carts come; but they're only a hum, for the sun and the wind dry it up again,

And then on manure in a powder impure the pedestrian's fated to sup again.

It's worse than a circus. If men from the "Vorkus" were turned on to keep it well swept up,

There might be improvement. But there's no such movement; the dire thorax-torture is kept up.

Manure-desiccation sets up irritation and then inflammation will follow,

Your tonsils get red, you've a pain in your head, and you find it a labour to swallow.

And as to your nose!—well, I do not suppose for that organ reformers feel pity,

Or I really can't think every species of stink would find such ready home in the City.

There's nothing more foul than your grim Asphalte-ghoul, —save that dread Tophet Valley of Bunyan's!—

And then manhole whiffs! Or nose-torturing sniffs from the shops that sell "Sausage-and-onions"!!

What everyone knows is the human proboscis this Bouquet de Babylon bothers.

Surely pavements of wood cannot be very good when they lead to such stenches and smothers.

Ah, Sir, and dear Madam, I'm sure old McAdam —though scientist prigs may prove sceptic—

Would be welcomed back by the sore-throated pack. Mother Earth is the true Antiseptic!!

And so ends my talk on a late evening walk, and the woes of this dashed wooden pavement,

Which worries my nose, sets my thorax in throes, my nostrils stuffs up, till I'm like a pug pup, all snorts, sniffs, and snuffles; my temper it ruffles; gives me a choked lung, and a coppery tongue, a stomach at war, and a nasal catarrh; a cough and a sneeze, and a gurgle and wheeze; a thirst quite immense, and a general sense that the bore is intense; and a perfect conviction, beyond contradiction, that till the new brood paved our city with wood, and its air made impure with dust-powdered manure, I never was sure that at last I had hit on one poor true-born Briton who was for a sore-throated slave meant!