William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[297] no impurities. In almost every house I find a bathroom. Let no reader think the presence of a bathroom in a house a little thing. It is a sign. A bath means cleanliness, and cleanliness means health. In Oriental countries we see the baths of sultans and pashas; basins of marble, in the midst of shady trees, with jets of flashing water; luxuries for the rich, not necessaries for the poor. Here we have baths for everyone who likes to pay for water; and I read in the Water Company's report that more than forty thousand heads of families in Philadelphia pay that company a water-rate for household baths. That record is a greater honour to the city-as implying many other things, the thousand virtues that depend on personal cleanliness — than even the beauties of Fairmont Park.

Yet Fairmont Park, containing three thousand five hundred acres, and lying along the Schuylkill River and Wissahickon Creek, is a wonder of the earth. Think of a park in which Hyde Park, with its four hundred acres (the Ring, the Serpentine, and the Ladies' Mile) would be lost! Central Park, New York, is more than double the size of Hyde Park, yet Central Park would lie in a mere corner