Where is your faith, O prophet ?" It was nonsense; the heat and all my incessant political work had tried me and I was mistaken.

That tramp was a drunken, or perhaps a crazy creature, afflicted with some skin disease such as are common among his class.

Why did I allow the incident to trouble me?
I went home and washed out my mouth, and sprinkled my clothes with a strong solution of permanganate of potash, for, although my own folly was evident, it is always as well to be careful, especially in hot weather.

Still I could not help wondering what might happen if by any chance smallpox were to get a hold of a population like that of Dunchester, or indeed of a hundred other places in England.
Since the passing of the famous Conscience Clause many years before, as was anticipated would be the case, and as the anti-vaccinators intended should be the case, vaccination had become a dead letter amongst at least seventy-five per cent.

of the people.[*] Our various societies and agents were not content to let things take their course and to allow parents to vaccinate their children, or to leave them unvaccinated as they might think fit.