"I say, young 'un, do you know why we're nearer heaven here than our neighbours?'
"'I shouldn't have thought so,' answered I with a naïveté which raised a laugh, and dashed the tall man for a moment.
"'Yer don't? then I'll tell yer. Acause we're atop of the house in the first place, and next place yer'll die here six months sooner nor if yer worked in the room below. A'n't that logic and science, Orator?' appealing to Crossthwaite.
"'Why?' asked I.
"'Acause you get all the other floors' stinks up here, as well as your own. Concentrated essence of man's flesh, is this here as you're a-breathing. Cellar work-room we calls Rheumatic Ward, because of the damp. Ground-floor's, Fever Ward—them as don't get typhus gets dysentery, and them as don't get dysentery gets typhus—your nose 'd tell yer why if you opened the back windy. First floor's Ashmy Ward—don't you hear 'um now through the cracks in the boards, a-puffing away like a nest of young locomotives? And this here more august and upper-crust cockloft is the Conscrumptive Hospital. First you begins to cough, then you proceed to expectorate—spittoons, as you see, perwided free gracious for nothing—fined a kivarten if you spits on the floor—
Then your cheeks they grow red, and your nose it grows thin,
And your bones they sticks out, till they comes through your skin:
and then, when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear shivering bare backs of the hairystocracy,
Die, die, die,
Away you fly,