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!