“What do you think of it?” asked Dr. Strong.
“It’s a bad showing.”
“It’s a bad showing and a bad property. Why don’t you buy it?”
“Who? I? Are you advising me to buy a job-lot of diseases?” queried Mr. Clyde.
“Well—as a protective investment. We’d be safe here if those tenements were run differently.”
“But we aren’t in touch with them at all. They are around the corner on another block.”
“Nevertheless, visitors pass daily between your house and Saddler’s Shacks. One of the young men from there delivers bread, often with his bare and probably filthy hands. Two of the women peddle fruit about the neighborhood. What Saddler’s Shacks get in the way of disease, you may easily get by transmission from them. Further, the sanitary arrangements of the shacks are primitive, not to say prehistoric, and, incidentally, illegal. They are within the area of fly-travel from here, so both the human and the winged disease-bearers have the best possible opportunity to pick up infection in its worst form.”
“Ugh!” said Mrs. Sharpless. “I’ll never eat with a fly again as long as I live!”
“Wouldn’t it be a simple matter to have the Bureau of Health condemn the property?” asked Mr. Clyde.
“It would not.” Dr. Strong spoke with curt emphasis.