She read on:—

Come to me, ye women who suffer, and I will give you relief. All those

wasting and wearing ailments from which the tender sex suffers, vanish

like mist before the healing, revivifying influence of Gospel Herbs.

Supposed incurable diseases: Rheumatism, Dropsy, Diabetes and all

kidney ills, Stomach Trouble, Scrofula, Blood Poison, even the dreaded

scourge, Consumption, yield at once to this remedy.

Though my special message is to women, I will not withhold this

boon from any suffering human. Come one and all, rich and poor,

young and old, of either sex. Your money refunded if I do not cure

you. Public meeting Monday and Tuesday evenings, at eight o’clock

sharp in the Scatcherd Opera House; admission free to all. Private

consultation at the Mallory Hotel, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday

from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Remember, I cure where the doctors fail; or

no pay.

Prof. Graham Gray,

The Great Gray Benefactor.

Mrs. Sharpless held out for the general view the advertisement, which

occupied, in huge type, two thirds of a page of the “Bugle.” The

remainder of the page was taken up with testimonials to the marvelous

effects of the Gospel Herbs. Most of the letters were from far-away

towns, but there were a few from the general vicinity of Bairdsville.

Meantime Dr. Strong had been delicately tasting and smelling the

contents of the bottle, which were thick and reddish.

“What do you make out is in it?” asked Clyde.

“Death—and a few worse things. Grandma Sharpless, you say that the girl

cried for this after you took it from her?”

“Not only that; she wrote to the Professor for more. And when it came I

smashed the bottle.”

“You ought to have the honorary degree of M.D. Well, it’s pretty plain,

but to make sure I’ll send this to Worthington for an analysis.”

“So our friend, the gray wolf, is going to prowl in Bairdstown for the

next three days!” Thomas Clyde began to rub his chin softly; then not

so softly; and presently quite hard. His wife watched him with troubled

eyes. When his hand came down to rest upon his knee, it was doubled

into a very competent-looking fist. His face set in the expression

which the newspapers of his own city had dubbed, after the tenement

campaign of the year before, “Clyde’s fighting smile.”

“Oh, Tom!” broke out his wife, “what kind of trouble are you going to

get into now?”

“Trouble?” repeated the head of the family, in well-simulated surprise.

“Why, dear, I wasn’t even thinking of trouble—for myself. But I believe

it is time for a little action. Let’s call this a household meeting”

(this was one of the established methods of the Clyde clan) “and find

out. As it isn’t a family affair, we won’t call in the children this

time. Strong, what, if anything, are we going to do about this stranger

in our midst? Are we going to let him take us in?”

“The question is,” said Dr. Strong quickly, “whether the Clyde family

is willing to loan its subsidized physician temporarily to the city of

Bairdstown.”

“On the Chinese plan,” supplemented Clyde.

“Certainly. On the Chinese plan of trying to save the community from a

visitation instead of waiting to cure them of the incurable results of

it.”

“By visitation I suppose you mean Professor Gray?” said Mrs. Sharpless.

“Exactly. I should rank him rather higher than an epidemic of scarlet

fever, as an ally of damage and death.”

“I’ll vote ‘Yes,’” said Mrs. Clyde rather plaintively. “Only, I wish

you two men didn’t have so much Irish in your temperament.”

“I scorn your insinuation,” replied her husband. “I’m the original dove

of peace, but this Gray person ruffles my plumage. What do you say,

Grandma?”

“Bairdstown is my own place, partly. I know the people and they know me

and I won’t sit quiet and see ‘em put upon. I vote ‘Yes.’”

“Make it unanimous!” said Clyde. “What’s the first move of the army of

relief? I’m in on this somewhere, Strong.”

“Contribute your car for a couple of days, then, and we’ll go out on a

still hunt for the elusive clue and the shy and retiring evidence. In

other words, we’ll scour the county, and look up some of these local

testimonials which the Great Gray One gathered in last year, and now

prints in the ‘Bugle.’”

“And I’ll stop in town and see Mr. Huddleston to-morrow,” said Mrs.

Sharpless.

“You won’t get any results,” prophesied the Health Master. “But,

anyway, get him to come to the Gray lecture on Tuesday evening. We’ll

need him.”

During the ensuing two and a half days and two nights Mrs. Clyde had

speech of her husband but once; and that was at 2 a.m. when he woke her

up to tell her that he was having the time of his life, and she replied

by asking him whether he had let the cat in, and returned to her

dreams.

Bairdstown’s Suffering Womanhood—as per advertisement—turned out

extensively and self-commiseratingly to the free lecture of Tuesday

evening, bringing with them a considerable admixture of the male

populace, curious, cynical, or expectant. On the platform sat a number

of “special guests,” including the Rev. Mr. Huddleston, mild of face

and white of hair, and the Honorable Silas Harris, owner of the

“Bugle.”

“Cured” patients, to the number of half a dozen, fidgeted in the seats

of honor with expressions of conscious and pleasurable importance.

“They appear to be enjoying poor health quite literally,” whispered

Clyde to Dr. Strong, as the two, begrimed with the dust of a long day’s

travel just finished, slipped quietly into side seats.

At once the entertainment began. A lank, harshfaced, muscular man whom

Professor Gray introduced as his assistant, seated himself at the

piano, and struck a chord, whereupon the Professor, in a powerful

voice, sang what he termed the “Hymn of Healing,” inviting the audience

to “assist” in the chorus, which gem of poesy ran as follows:—

“Ye shall be healed! Ye shall be healed!

Trust in the gospel advice.

Cured by the herbs of the wood and the field;

Healed without money or price.”

“Some poetic license in that last line,” murmured Clyde to his

companion.

“The next portion of our programme,” announced the Great Gray

Benefactor, “will be corroborative readings from the Good Book.” And he

proceeded to deliver in oratorical style sundry Bible quotations so

patched together and garbled as to ascribe, inferentially, miraculous

powers to the Gospel Herbs. Then came the lecture proper, which was

merely an amplification of the “Bugle” advertisement, interspersed with

almanac funny stories and old jokes.

“And now, before our demonstration,” concluded Professor Graham Gray,

“if there is any here seeking enlightenment or help, let him rise. This

is your meeting, dear friends, as much as mine; free to your voices and

your needs, as well as to your welcome presence here. I court inquiry

and fair investigation. Any questions? If not, we—”

“One moment!” The whole assemblage turned, as on a single pivot, to the

side aisle where Dr. Strong had risen and now stood, tall, straight,

and composed, waiting for silence.

“Our friend on the right has the floor,” said the Professor suavely.

“You state that this God-given secret remedy was imparted to you for

the relief of human misery?” asked Dr. Strong.

“Thousands of grateful patients attest it, my friend.”

“Then, with human beings suffering and dying all about you, why do you

continue to profit by keeping it secret?”

Down sat the questioner. A murmur rose and ran, as the logic of the

question struck home. But the quack had his answer pat.

“Does not the Good Book say that the laborer is worthy of his hire? Do

your regular physicians, of whom I understand you are one, treat cases

for nothing? Ah,” he went on, outstretching his hands to the audience

with a gesture of appeal, “the injustice which I have suffered from the

jealousy and envy of the medical profession! Never do I enter a town

without curing many unfortunates that the regular doctors have given up

as hopeless. Hence the violence of their attacks upon me. But I forgive

them their prejudice, as I pity their ignorance.”

Some applause followed the enunciation of this noble sentiment.

“We have with us to-night,” pursued the speaker, quick to catch the

veering sentiment, “a number of these marvelous cures. You shall hear

from the very mouths of the saved ones testimony beyond cavil. I will

call first on Mrs. Amanda Gryce, wife of Mr. Stanley Gryce, the well

and favorably known laundryman. Speak up clearly, Mrs. Gryce, and tell

your story.”

“It’s two years now that I been doctorin’,” said the lady thus adjured,

in a fluttering voice. “I doctored with a allopathic physician here,

an’ with a homypath over to Roxton, an’ with a osty-path down to

Worthington, an’ with Peruny in betwixt, an’ they didn’t any of ‘em do

me no good till I tried Professor Gray. He seen how I felt without

askin’ me a question. He just pulled down my eyelid an’ looked at it.

‘You’re all run down; gone!’ says he. An’ thet’s jest what I was. So he

treated me with his herb medicine an’ I feel like a new woman. An’ I

give Professor Graham Gray the credit an’ the thanks of a saved woman.”

“Not to mention seven dollars an’ a half,” supplemented a mournful

drawl from the audience.

“You hush, Stan Gryce!” cried the healed one, shrill above the laughter

of the ribald. “Would you begrutch a few mizzable dollars for your

poor, sufferin’ wife’s health?”

An alarmed child of ten was next led forward and recited in sing-song

measure:—

“I—had—the—fits—for—most—three— years—and—I—was—cured—by

Gospel—Herbs—and—I—have—come—here—to—say—God—bless—my—dear

benefactor—Professor—Graham—Gray,”—and sat down hard at the last word,

whereupon a tenor squeak in the far gallery took up the refrain:

“You’d scarcex peckwon of my yage

To speakin public on the stage.”

Again there was a surge of mirth, and the lecturer frowned with

concern. But he quickly covered whatever misgivings he might have had

by bringing forward other “testimonies”: old Miss Smithson whose

nervousness had been quite dispelled by two doses of the herbs; Auntie

Thomas (colored) whose “misery” had vanished before the wonder-working

treatment; and the Widow Carlin, whose boy had been “spittin’ blood

like as if he was churchyard doomed,” but hadn’t had a bad coughing

spell since taking the panacea. And all this time Dr. Strong sat quiet

in his seat, with a face of darkening sternness.

“You have heard your fellow-citizens,” the lecturer took up his theme

again, “testify to the efficacy of my methods. And you see on this

rostrum with me that grand and good old man, the worthy pastor of so

many of you, my dear and honored friend—I feel that I may call him

friend, since I have his approval of my humble labors—the Reverend

Doctor Huddleston. You see also here, lending the support of his valued

presence, the Honorable Silas Harris, whom you have twice honored by

sending him to the state legislature. Their presence is the proudest

testimonial to my professional character. In Mr. Harris’s fearless and

independent journal you have read the sworn evidence of those who have

been cured by my Godgiven remedies; evidence which is beyond

challenge—”

“I challenge it.”

Dr. Strong, who had been hopefully awaiting some such opening, was on

his feet again.

“You have had your say!” cried Professor Gray, menacing him with a

shaking hand. “These people don’t want to hear you. They understand

your motives. You can’t run this meeting.”

The gesture was a signal. The raw-boned accompanist, whose secondary

function was that of bouncer, made a quick advance from the rear,

reached for the unsuspicious Health Master—and recoiled from the impact

of Mr. Thomas Clyde’s solid shoulder so sharply that only the side wall

checked his subsidence.

“Better stay out of harm’s way, my friend,” suggested Clyde amiably.

Immediately the hall was in an uproar. The more timid of the women were

making for the exits, when a high, shrill voice, calling for order

strenuously, quelled the racket, and a very fat man waddled down the

middle aisle, to be greeted by cries of “Here’s the Mayor.” Several

excited volunteers explained the situation to him from as many

different points of view, while Professor Graham Gray bellowed his

appeal from the platform.

“All I want is fair play. They’re trying to break up my meeting.”

“Not at all,” returned Dr. Strong’s calm voice. “I’m more than anxious

to have it continue.”

With a happy inspiration, Mr. Clyde jumped up on his bench.

“I move Mayor Allen take the chair!” he shouted. “Professor Gray says

that he courts fair investigation. Let’s give it to him, in order.”

A shout of acclaim greeted this suggestion. Bairdstown’s Suffering

Womanhood and Bored Manhood was getting more out of a free admission

than it had ever had in its life before. Ponderously the obese Mayor

hoisted his weight up the steps and shook hands with the reluctant

lecturer. He then invited Dr. Strong to come to the platform.

“This is my meeting!” protested the Great Gray Benefactor. “I hired

this hall and paid good money for it.”

“You said it was our meeting as much as yours!” roared an insurgent

from the crowd, and a chorus of substantiation followed.

“Ten minutes will be all that I want,” announced Dr. Strong as he took

a chair next the Mayor.

“That’s fair!” shrilled the Chairman. “On the Professor’s own

invitation.” In a tone lowered to the alarmed quack’s ear, he added:

“Of course, you can back out if you want to. But I’d advise you to do

it quick if you’re going to do it at all. This is a queer-tempered

town.”

So significant was his tone that the other judged advance to be safer

than retreat. Therefore, summoning all his assurance, he sought, in an

impassioned speech, to win back his hearers. He was a natural orator,

and, when he reached his peroration, he had a large part of his

audience with him again. In the flush of renewed confidence he made a

grave tactical error, just when he should have closed.

“Let this hireling of the Doctors’ Trust, the trust that would strangle

all honest competition, answer these if he can!” he shouted, shaking

the page of testimonials before his adversary’s face. “Let him confute

the evidence of these good and honorable women who have appeared here

to-night; women who have no selfish aims to subserve. Let him impugn

the motives of the reverend clergyman and of the honored statesman who

sit here with me. Let him do this, or let him shrink from this hall in

the shame and dishonor which he seeks to heap upon one whose sole

ambition it is to relieve suffering and banish pain and death.”

There was hearty applause as the speaker sat down and Dr. Strong arose

to face a gathering now turned for the most part hostile. He wasted no

time in introduction or argument. “Mr. Chairman,” said he, “Professor

Gray rests his case on his testimonials. With Mr. Clyde I have

investigated a number of them, and will give you my results. Here are

half a dozen testimonials to the value of one of his nostrums, the

Benefaction Pills, from women who have been cured, so they state, of

diseases ranging from eczema through indigestion to consumption. All,

please note, by the same wonderful medicine. And here,” he drew a small

box from his pocket, “is a sample of the medicine. I have just had it

analyzed. What do you suppose they are? Sugar! Just plain sugar and

nothing else.” Professor Gray leaped to his feet. “You don’t deny the

cures!” he thundered.

“I don’t deny that these people are well to-day. And I don’t deny that

the testimonials from them are genuine, as documents. But your sugar

pills had no more to do with the cure than so much moonshine. Listen,

you people! Here is the core and secret of quackery:

“All diseases tend to cure themselves, through the natural resistance

of the body. But for that we should all be dead. This man, or some

other of his kind, comes along with his promises and pills, and when

the patient recovers from the disease in the natural course of events,

he claims the credit. Meantime, he is selling sugar at about one

hundred dollars per pound.”

“Sugar,” said the quack, quick-wittedly. “But what kind of sugar? This

sugar, as he calls it, is crystal precipitated from the extract of

these healing herbs. No chemist can determine its properties by any

analysis.”

“Very well turned,” said Dr. Strong, with a smile. “I can’t immediately

disprove that, though I could with time. But, whatever the case with

his sugar, any chemist can analyze this.” He held up a small bottle,

half filled with a red-brown liquid. “This is the Extract of Gospel

Herbs. Now, let us see what this does.”

He referred to his copy of the “Bugle,” containing the testimonials.

“Here is Mrs. Sarah Jenkins, of the neighboring town of Maresco, where

Professor Gray lectured a year ago, cured of Bright’s disease and

dropsy; Miss Allie Wheat, of Weedsport, cured of cancer of the stomach;

and Mrs. Howard Cleary, of Roxton, wholly relieved of nervous breakdown

and insomnia. All genuine testimonials. Mr. Clyde and I have traced

them.”

Professor Gray raised his head with a flash of triumph. “You see!” he

cried. “He has to admit the genuineness of my testimonials!”

“Of your testimonials; yes. But what about your cures? Mrs. Jenkins

has, as she said, ceased to suffer from her ills. She died of Bright’s

disease and dropsy three months after Professor Gray cured her of them.

Miss Wheat, whose cancer was purely imaginary, is now a hopeless wreck,

in a sanitarium whither the Gospel Herbs drove her. Mrs. Cleary—but let

me read what she testified to. Here it is in the paper with a picture

of the Cleary home:—”

_Dear Professor Gray: You have indeed been a benefactor to me. Before

our baby was born my husband and I were the happiest of couples. Then I

became a nervous wreck. I couldn’t sleep. I was cross and irritable. My

nerves seemed all on fire. Your first treatment worked wonders. I slept

like a log. Since then I have not been without Gospel Herbs in the

house, and I am a well woman._

(Signed) Mrs. Howard Cleary.

“That was a year ago,” continued Dr. Strong. “Yesterday we visited the

Cleary home. We found a broken husband and a deserted baby. The young

wife we traced to Worthington, where we discovered her—well, I won’t

name to this audience the sort of place we found her in.

“But so far as there can be a hell on this earth, she had descended

into it, and this,” he held the vial high to view, “_this_ sent her

there.” His fingers opened; there was a crisp little crash of glass,

and the red-brown liquid crept and spread along the floor, like blood.

“Morphine,” said Dr. Strong. “Morphine, which enslaves the body and

destroys the soul. There are your Gospel Herbs!”

A murmur rose, and deepened into a growl. The Great Gray Benefactor,

his face livid, sprang forward.

“Lies!” he shouted. “All lies! Where’s his proof? What’s he got to

show? Nothing but his own say-so. If there’s a law in the land, I’ll

make him sweat for this. Mr. Huddleston, I appeal to you for justice.”

“We shall be glad to hear from the Reverend Mr. Huddleston,” mildly

suggested the chairman, who was evincing an enjoyment of the

proceedings quite puzzling to Dr. Strong.

The old clergyman got slowly to his feet. His mild, weak face was

troubled. “Let us bear and forbear,” he pleaded in a tremulous voice.

“I cannot believe these charges against our good friend, Professor

Gray. I am sure that he is a good and worthy man. He has given most

liberally to the church. I am informed that he is a member of his home

church in good and regular standing, and I find in the editorial

columns of the ‘Church Pillar’ a warm encomium upon his beneficent

work, advising all to try his remedies. Surely our friend, Dr. Strong,

has been led astray by mistaken zeal.

“Only yesterday two members of my congregation, most estimable ladies,

called to see me and told me how they had benefited by a visit just

made to Professor Gray. He had treated them with his new Gospel Elixir,

of which he has spoken to me. There was evidence of its efficacy in

their very bearing and demeanor—”

“I should say there was! _And_ in their breath. Did you smell it?”

The interruption came in a very clear, positive, and distinct

contralto.

“Great Grimes’s grass-green ghost!” exclaimed Mr. Thomas Clyde, quite

audibly amidst the startled hush. “Grandma Sharpless is among those

present!”

“I—I—I—I do not think,” began the clergyman, aghast, “that the matter

occurred to me.”

“Because, if _you_ didn’t, _I_ did,” continued the voice composedly.

“They reeked of liquor.”

The tension to which the gathering had been strung abruptly loosened in

mirth.

“Mrs. Sharpless will please take the platform,” invited the

Mayor-chairman.

“No, I’ll do my talking from here.” The old lady stood up, a straight,

solid, uncompromising figure, in the center of the floor. “I met those

two ladies in the parsonage hall,” she explained. “They were coming out

as I was going in. They stopped to talk to me. They both talked at

once. I wouldn’t want to say that they were—well—exactly—”

“Spifflicated,” suggested a helpful voice from the far rear.

“Spifflicated; thank you,” accepted the speaker. “But they certainly

were—”

“Lit up,” volunteered another first-aid to the hesitant.

“Yes, lit up. One of them loaned me her bottle. If I’m any judge of bad

whiskey, that was it.”

An appreciative roar from the house testified to the fact that Mrs.

Sharpless had her audience in hand.

“As for you women on the stage,” she pursued, rising to her topic, “I

know what’s wrong with you.‘Mandy Gryce, if you’d tend more to your

house and less to your symptoms, you wouldn’t be flitting from

allopathic bud to homoeopathic flower like a bumblebee with the

stomach-ache.” (“Hear, hear!” from Mr. Gryce.) “Lizzie Tompy, your fits

are nine tenths temper. I’d cure you of ‘em without morphine. Miss

Smithson, if you’d quit strong green tea, three times a day, those

nerves of yours would give you a fairer chance—and your neighbors,

too.” (Tearful sniffs from Miss Smithson.)

“Auntie Thomas, you wait and see what your rheumatism says to you

to-morrow, when the dope has died out of your system. Susan Carlin, you

ought to be home this minute, looking after your sick boy, instead of

on a stage, in your best bib and tucker, giving testimonials to

you-don’t-know-what-all poison.

“Bairdstown’s Suffering Womanhood!” exclaimed the vigorous old lady,

her color rising with her voice. “Go home! Go home, you poor,

self-coddling fussybuddies, to your washboards and your sewing-machines

and forget your imaginary symptoms.

“There!” she drew a long breath, looking about over the group of

wilting testimonial-givers. “That’s the first speech I have ever made,

and I guess it’ll be the last. But before I stop, I’ve got a word to

say to you, Professor Graham Gray. Bless us! Where’s the man gone?”

“Professor Gray,” announced the chairman with a twinkle in his voice,

“has retired to obtain fresh evidence. At least, that is what he _said_

he had gone for.”

From the main floor came a hoarse suggestion which had the words “tar

and feathers” in it. It was cut short by a metallic shriek from

without, followed by a heavy rumbling.

“Something seems to tell me,” said the fat Mayor solemnly, “that the

9.30 express, which just whistled for the crossing, is the heavier by

about two hundred pounds of Great Gray Benefactor clinging to the rear

platform, and happy to be there.”

“And your money back if not benefited,” piped a reedy voice from the

front, whereupon there was another roar.

“The bright particular star of these proceedings having left, is there

anything else to come before the meeting?” inquired the chairman.

“I’d like to have one more word,” said Dr. Strong. “Friends, as one

quack is, all quacks are. They differ only in method and degree. Every

one of them plays a game with stacked cards, in which you are his

victims, and Death is his partner. And the puller-in for this game is

the press.

“You have heard to-night how a good and wellmeaning clergyman has been

made stool-pigeon for this murderous charlatan, through the lying of a

religious—God save the mark!—weekly. That publication is beyond our

reach. But there is one here at home which did the quack’s work for

him, and took his money for doing it. I suggest that the Honorable

Silas Harris explain!”

“I’m running my paper as a business proposition,” growled the baited

editor and owner of the ‘Bugle,’ “and I’m running it to suit myself and

this community.”

“You’re running it to suit the crooked and cruel advertisers who prey

on this community,” retorted the other. “And you’ve served them further

in the legislature, where you voted to kill the patent-medicine bill,

last session, in protection of your own profits. Good profits, too. One

third of all your advertising is medical quackery which takes good

money out of this town by sheer swindling; money which ought to stay in

town and be spent on the legitimate local products advertised in your

paper. If I were a local advertiser, I’d want to know why.”

“If that’s the case,” remarked Mr. Stanley Gryce, quick to catch the

point, “I guess you owe my family seven dollars an’ a half, Silas, and

till it’s paid up you can just drop my laundry announcement out of your

columns.”

“I guess I’ll stay out for a spell, too,” supplemented Mr. Corson, the

hay and feed man. “For a week, my ad’s been swamped by Swamp Root so

deep you can’t see it.”

“While you’re about it,” added a third, “leave me out. I’m kinder sick

of appearin’ between a poisonous headache powder and a consumption

dope. Folks’ll be accusin’ me of seekin’ trade untimely.” This was

greeted with a whoop, for the speaker was the local undertaker.

“We’ve got a league for Clean Advertising in Worthington,” announced

Mr. Clyde. “Why not organize something of the kind here?”

“Help!” shouted the Honorable Silas, throwing up his hands. “Don’t

shoot! I holler ‘Enough!’ As soon as the contracts are out, I’ll quit.

There’s no money in patent-medicine advertising any more for the small

paper, anyway.”

“Well, we’ve done our evening’s chores, I reckon,” remarked the

chairman. “A motion to adjourn will now be in order.”

“Move we adjourn with the chorus of the ‘Hymn of Healing,’” piped the

wag with the reedy voice, and the audience filed out, uproariously and

profanely singing:—

“Ye shall be healed! Ye shall be healed!

Trust in the gospel advice.

Cured by the herbs of the wood and the field;

Healed without money or price.”

“Well, young man,” said Grandma Sharpless, coming forward to join the

Health Master, “you certainly carried out your programme.”

“I?” said Dr. Strong, affectionately tucking the old lady’s arm under

his. “To you the honors of war. I only squelched a quack. You taught

Bairds-town’s self-coddling womanhood a lesson that will go down the

generations.”

“What I want to know,” said the Mayor, advancing to shake hands with

Mrs. Sharpless, “is this: what’s a fussybuddy?”

“A fussybuddy,” instructed Grandma Sharpless wisely, “is a woman who

catches a stomach-ache from a patent-medicine almanac. What I want to

know, Tom Allen, is what you had against the man. I seemed to get an

inkling that you didn’t exactly like him.”

“He’s forgotten me,” chuckled the Mayor, “but I haven’t forgotten him.

Fifteen years ago he came along here horse-doctoring and poisoned a

perfectly good mare for me. He won’t try to poison this town again in a

hurry. You finished him, Mrs. Sharpless, you and Dr. Strong.”

“What _I_ want to know,” said the Health Master, “is how poor old Mr.

Huddleston feels about that contribution, now.”

A month later he found out. Traveling by trolley one evening, he felt a

hand on his shoulder, and turned to face Professor Graham Gray.

“No hard feelings, I hope,” said the quack with superb urbanity. “All

in the way of business, I take it. I’d have done the same to you, if

you’d come butting in on my trade. Say, but that old lady was a Tartar!

She cooked my goose in Bairdstown. For all that, I got an unsolicited

testimonial from there two weeks ago that’s a wonder. Anonymous, too.

Not a word of writing with it to tell who the grateful patient might

be.”

“What was it?” asked Dr. Strong with polite interest.

“A twenty-dollar bill. Now, _what_ do you think of that?”

When Dr. Strong spoke again—and the Great Gray Benefactor has always

regarded this as the most inconsequential reply he ever received to a

plain question—it was after a long and thoughtful pause.

“I think,” said he with conviction, “that I’ll start in going to church

again, next Sunday.”

X.

THE HOUSE THAT CAUGHT COLD

“Can you cure a cold?” asked Grandma Sharpless.

A flare from the soft-coal fire flickered across the library, revealing

a smile on the Health Master’s face.

“Am I a millionaire?” he countered.

“Not from your salary as Chinese physician to the Clydes,” laughed the

head of that family.

“If I could cure a cold, I should be, easily, more than that. I’d be

the foremost medical discoverer of the day.”

“Then you can’t cure a cold,” pursued Mrs. Sharpless.

“What _is_ a cold?” countered the Health Master in that insinuating

tone of voice which he employed to provoke the old lady into one of

those frequent verbal encounters so thoroughly enjoyed by both of them.

“An ordinary common cold in the head. You know what I mean perfectly

well, young man. The kind you catch by getting into drafts.”

“Oh, _that!_ Well, you see, there’s no such thing.”

“No such thing as a cold in the head, Dr. Strong?” said Julia, looking

up from her book. “Why, we’ve all had ‘em, loads of times.”

“And Bettina is coming down with one now, if I’m any judge,” said Mrs.

Sharpless. “She’s had the sniffles all day.”

“Let’s hope it isn’t a cold. Maybe it’s only chicken-pox or mumps.”

“Are you wishing chicken-pox and mumps on my baby?” cried Mrs. Clyde.

In the three years during which Dr. Strong had been the “Chinese

physician” of the household, earning his salary by keeping his patients

well instead of curing them when ill, Mrs. Clyde had never quite

learned to guard against the surprises which so often pointed the

Health Master’s truths.

“Not by any means; I’m only hoping for the lesser of evils.”

“But mumps and chicken-pox are real diseases,” protested Clyde.

“And you think that a ‘cold,’ as you call it, isn’t.”

“Why, no,” said Clyde hesitantly. “I wouldn’t call it a disease, any

more than I’d call a sprain a broken leg.”

“But it is. A very real, serious disease. Its actual name is coryza.”

“Bogy-talk,” commented Grandma Sharpless scornfully. “Big names for

little things.”

“Not a little thing at all, as we should all realize if our official

death-records really dealt in facts.”

“Death-records?” said Grandma Sharpless incredulously. “People don’t

die of colds, do they?”

“Hundreds every year; all around us.”

“Well, _I_ never hear of it.”

“Are you sure? Think back and recall how many of your friends’ obituary

notices include some such sentence as this: ‘Last Thursday evening Mr.

Smith caught a severe cold, from which he took to his bed on Saturday,

and did not leave it again until his death yesterday morning?’ Doesn’t

that sound familiar?”

“So familiar,” cried Mr. Clyde, “that I believe the newspapers keep it

set up in type.”

“But the newspaper always goes on to say that Mr. Smith developed

pneumonia or grip or bronchitis, and died of that, not of the cold,”

objected Mrs. Sharpless.

“Oh, yes. In the mortality records poor Smith usually appears under the

heading of one of the well-recognized diseases. It would hardly be

respectable to die of a cold, would it?”

“He doesn’t _die_ of the cold,” insisted the old lady. “He catches the

cold and dies of something else.”

“If I take a dose of poison,” the Health Master mildly propounded, “and

fall down and break my neck, what do I die of?”

“It’s no parallel,” said Grandma Sharpless. “And even if it is,” she

added, tacitly abandoning that ground, “we’ve always had colds and we

always will have ‘em.”

“Not with my approval, at least,” remarked the Health Master.

“I guess Providence won’t wait for your approval, young man.”

“Then you regard coryza as a dispensation of Providence? The

Presbyterian doctrine of foreordination, applied to the human nose,”

smiled the physician. “We’re all predestined to the ailment, and

therefore might as well get out our handkerchiefs and prepare to sneeze

our poor sinful heads off. Is that about it?”

“No, it isn’t! This is a green December and it means a full churchyard.

We’re in for a regular cold-breeding season.”

“Nonsense! Weather doesn’t breed colds.”

“What does, then?”

“A very mean and lively little germ. He’s rather more poisonous than

the chicken-pox and mumps variety, although he hasn’t as bad a name. In

grown-ups he prepares the soil, so to speak, for other germs, by

getting all through the system and weakening its resistant powers,

thereby laying it open to the attacks of such enemies as the

pneumococcus, which is always waiting just around the corner of the

tongue to give us pneumonia. Or bronchitis may develop, or tonsillitis,

or diphtheria, or kidney trouble, or indeed almost anything. I once

heard an eminent lecturer happily describe the coryza bacillus as the

bad little boy of the gang who, having once broken into the system,

turns around and calls back to the bigger boys: ‘Come on in, fellers.

The door’s open.’

“With children the coryza-bug makes various trouble without necessarily

inviting the others in. A great proportion of the serious ear-troubles

come from colds; all the way from earache to mastoiditis, and the

consequent necessity of quick operations to save the patient’s life.

Almost any of the organs may be impaired by the activity of the little

pest. And yet as intelligent a family as this”—he looked around the

circle—“considers it a ‘mere cold.’”

“Why haven’t you told us before?” asked Mr. Clyde bluntly.

“A just reproach,” admitted the Health Master. “Not having been

attacked, I haven’t considered defense—a wretched principle in health

matters. In fact, I’ve let the little matters of life go, too much, in

my interest in the bigger.”

“But what about Bettina?” said the mother anxiously.

“Let’s have her in,” said the Health Master, and the six-year-old

presently trotted into the room, announcing through a somewhat reddened

nose, “I’m all stobbed ub; and Katie rubbed me with goose-grease, and I

don’d wand to take any paregoric.”

“Paregoric?” said the physician. “Opium? I guess not. Off to bed with

you, Toots, and we’ll try to exorcise the demon with hot-water bottles

and extra blankets.”

Following her usual custom of kissing everybody good-night around the

circle, Bettina held up her arms to her sister, who was nearest.

“Stop!” said the Health Master. “No kissing.”

“Not even my mamma?” queried the child. “I’m afraid not. You remember

when Charley had scarlet fever he wasn’t allowed even to be very near

any of you.”

“But scarlet fever is the most contagious of any of the diseases, isn’t

it?” asked Julia.

“Not as contagious as a cold in the head.”

“I don’t know how contagious a cold is,” said Grandma Sharpless; “but I

do know this: once it gets into a house, it goes through it like

wildfire.”

“Then the house ought to be ashamed of itself. That’s sheer

carelessness.”

“Half the kids in our school have got stopped-up noses,” contributed

Charley.

“Why hasn’t the Committee on Schools reported the fact?” demanded the

Health Master, turning an accusing eye on Julia.

“Why—why, I didn’t think of it,” said she. “I didn’t think it was

anything.”

“Oh, you didn’t! Well, if what Charley says is correct, I should think

your school ought to be put under epidemic regimen.”

“You’d have a fine row with the Board of Education, trying to persuade

them to special action for any such cause as that,” remarked Mr. Clyde.

“There’s the measure of their intelligence, then,” returned the Health

Master. “Sickness is sickness, just as surely as a flame is fire; and

there is no telling, once it’s well started, how much damage it may

do.”

“But a cold is only in the head, or rather, in the nose,” persisted

Mrs. Sharpless.

“That’s where you’re wrong. Coryza is a disease of the whole system,

and it weakens the whole system. The symptoms are most apparent in the

nose and mouth: and it is from the nose and mouth that the disease is

spread. But if you’ve got the cold you’ve got it in every corner of

your being. You won’t be convinced of its importance, I suppose, until

I can produce facts and figures. I only hope they won’t be producible

from this house. But by the end of the season I’ll hope to have them.

Meantime we’ll isolate Bettykin.”

Bettina was duly isolated. Meanwhile the active little coryza bacillus

had got its grip on Mr. Clyde, who for three days attended to his

business with streaming eyes, and then retired, in the company of

various hot-water bags, bottles, and foot-warmers, to the sanctuary of

his own bedroom, where he led a private and morose existence for one

week. His general manager succeeded to his desk; likewise, to his

contaminated pencils, erasers, and other implements, whereby he

alternately sneezed and objurgated himself into the care of a doctor,

with the general and unsatisfactory result that the balance-sheet of

Clyde & Co., Manufacturers, showed an obvious loss for the month—as it

happened, most unfortunately, an unusually busy month—of some three

thousand dollars, directly traceable to that unconsidered trifle, a

cold in the head.

“At that you got off cheap,” argued the Health Master.

It was three months after the invasion of the Clyde household by

Bettina’s coryza germ.

“I’m glad somebody considers it cheap!” observed Mr. Clyde. “Personally

I should rather have taken a trip to Europe on my share of that three

thousand dollars.”

“Yet you were lucky,” asserted Dr. Strong. “Bettykin got through her

earache without any permanent damage. Robin’s attack passed off without

complications. Your own onset didn’t involve any organ more vital than

your bank account. And the rest of us escaped.”

“Doesn’t it prove what I said,” demanded Grandma Sharpless; “that a

cold in the head is only a cold in the head?”

“‘Answer is No,’ as Togo would put it,” replied the Health Master. “In

fact, I’ve got proof here of quite the opposite, which I desire to

present to this gathering.”

“This meeting of the Household Protective Association is hereby called

to order!” announced Mr. Clyde, in the official tones proper to the

occasion. The children put aside their various occupations and assumed

a solemn and businesslike aspect which was part of the game. “The lone

official member will now report,” concluded the chairman.

“Let the Health Officer of the city report for me,” said Dr. Strong,

taking a printed leaflet from his pocket. “He is one of those rare

officials who aren’t afraid to tell people what they don’t know, and

may not want to know. Listen to what Dr. Merritt has to say.” And he

read:—

“‘The death-rate of the city for the month of February, like the rate

for December and January, is abnormally high, being a shade over ten

per cent above the normal for this time of year. While the causes of

mortality range through the commoner diseases, with a special rise in

pulmonary troubles, it is evident that the increase must be due to some

special cause. In the opinion of the Bureau of Health this cause is the

despised and infectious “cold,” more properly known as coryza, which

has been epidemic this winter in the city. Although the epidemic wave

is now receding, its disastrous aftereffects may be looked for in high

mortality rates for some months. Should a similar onset occur again,

the city will be asked to consider seriously a thorough school

campaign, with careful isolation of all suspicious cases.’”

“Did you write that, young man?” asked Mrs. Sharpless suspiciously.

“Why, no; I didn’t _write_ it,” answered the Health Master. “I’ll go as

far as to admit, however, that Dr. Merritt listens politely to my

humble suggestions when I offer them.”

“Humph! Ten per cent increase. What is that in real figures?”

“Twenty-five extra deaths a month,” said Manny Clyde, a growing expert

on local statistics.

“Seventy-five needless deaths for the three months, and more to come,”

said the Health Master, “besides all the disability, loss of time and

earning power and strength, and all the pain and suffering—which things

never get into the vital statistics, worse luck! So much to the account

of the busy little coryza-bug.”

“Can’t the Health Bureau do something?” asked the practical Mr. Clyde.

“Not much, until its public is better educated,” said Dr. Strong

wearily. “The present business of a health official is to try and beat

the fool-killer off from his natural prey with a printed tract. It’s

quite a job, when you come to consider it.”

“What he ought to have, is the club of the law!” said Mr. Clyde.

“Precisely. The people won’t give it to him. In this household we’re

better off, since we can make our own laws. Since Betty’s attack we’ve

tried out the isolation plan pretty effectually; and we’ve followed, as

well as might be, the rule of avoiding contact with people having

coryza.”

He glanced up at a flamboyant poster which Mrs. Clyde, who had a

natural gift of draftsmanship, had made in a spirit of mischief,

entitling it “The Red Nose as a Danger Signal.”

“As much truth as fun in that,” he remarked. “But, at the best, we

can’t live among people and avoid all danger. In fact, avoidance is

only the outer line of defense. The inner line is symbolized by a

homely rule, ‘Keep Comfortable.’”

“What’s comfort to do with keeping well?” asked Grandma Sharpless.

“What are your nerves for?” retorted Dr. Strong with his quizzical

smile.

“Young man,” said the old lady plaintively, “did I ever ask you a

question that you didn’t fire another back at me before it was fairly

out of my mouth? My nerves, if I let myself have any, wouldn’t be for

anything except to plague me.”

“Oh, those are pampered nerves. Normal nerves are to warn you. They’re

to tell you whether the little things of life are right with you.”

“And if they’re not?” asked Mr. Clyde.

“Why, then you’re uncomfortable. Which is to say, there’s something

wrong; and something wrong means, in time, a lessening of vitality, and

when you let down your body’s vitality you’re simply saying to any germ

that may happen along, ‘Come right in and make yourself at home.’

“Perhaps you remember when the house caught cold, how shocked Grandma

Sharpless was at my saying that colds aren’t caught in a draft. Well,

they’re not. Yet I ought to have qualified that. Now, what is a draft?

Air in motion. If there is one thing about air that we thoroughly know,

it’s this: that moving air is infinitely better for us than still air.

Even bad, stale air, if stirred vigorously into motion, seems to purify

itself and become breathable and good. Now, the danger of a draft is

that it may mean a sudden change of the body’s temperature. Nobody

thinks that wind is unhealthful, because when you’re out in the

wind—which is the biggest and freest kind of a draft—you’re prepared

for it. If not, your nerves say to you, ‘Move faster; get warm.’ It’s

the same indoors. If the draft chills you, your nerves will tell you

so. Therefore, mind your nerves. Otherwise, you’ll become specially

receptive to the coryza germ and when you’ve caught _that_, you’ll have

caught cold.”

“I wish,” remarked Mr. Clyde, “that my nerves would tell me why I feel

so logy every morning. They don’t say anything definite. It isn’t

indigestion exactly. But I feel slow and inert after breakfast, as if

my stomach hadn’t any enthusiasm in its job.”

“Breakfast is the only meal I don’t have with you, so I don’t know,”

replied the Health Master, who was a very early riser. “But I should

say you were eating the wrong things, perhaps.”

“How could that be?” said Mrs. Clyde. “Tom has the simplest kind of

breakfast, and it’s the same every day.”

“Well, there you are.” The Health Master’s tone assumed that the

solution was found.

“Where are we?” queried Mr. Clyde. “I’m up in the air!”

“What is this remarkably regular breakfast?”

“Eggs, rolls, and coffee.”

“Oh! Eggs every morning?”

“Two of them. Medium boiled.”

“Not even the method is varied. Same eggs, same preparation every

morning, seven days a week, four weeks a month, twelve months—”

“No. That’s my winter breakfast only.”

“Very well; four or five months in the year. No wonder your poor

stomach gets bored.”

“What’s the matter with eggs, Dr. Strong?” inquired Manny. “They let us

have ‘em, in training.”

“Nothing is the matter with two eggs, or twenty. But when you come to

two hundred, there’s something very obvious the matter—monotony. Your

stomach is a machine, it’s true, but it’s a human machine. It demands

variety.”

“Then Charles ought to be a model. He wants everything from soup to

pie.”

“A thoroughly normal desire for a growing boy.”

“He eats an awful lot of meat,” observed Julia, who was a somewhat

fastidious young lady. “My Sunday-school teacher calls meat-eaters

human tigers.”

“Oh, that’s too easy a generalization, Junkum,” replied the Health

Master. “With equal logic she could say that vegetable-eaters are human

cows.”

“But the vegetarians make very strong arguments,” said Mrs. Clyde.

“A lot of pale-eyed, weak-blooded nibblers!” stated Grandma Sharpless.

“If meat weren’t good for us, we wouldn’t have been eating it all these

generations.”

“True enough. Perhaps we eat a little too much of it, particularly in

the warm months. But in winter it’s practically a necessity.”

“Some of the big athletes say they’re vegetarians,” said Manny.

“There are individual cases,” admitted the Health Master; “but in the

long run it doesn’t work. A vegetarian race is, generally speaking,

small of stature and build, and less efficient than a meat-eating race.

The rule of eating is solid food, sound food, plenty of it, and a good

variety. Give your stomach a fair chance: don’t overload it, don’t

understock it, and don’t let it get bored.”

For some time Miss Bettina had been conducting a quiet and strategic

advance upon the Health Master, and now by a sudden onslaught she

captured his knee and, perching herself thereon, put a soft and chubby

hand under his chin.

“You want something, Miss Toodles,” he accused with a formidable frown.

“None of your wheedling ways with me! Out with it!”

“Candy,” said the child, in no way impressed by his severity.

“Candy, indeed! When?”

“Now. Any time. Lots of it. Lots of sugar, too.”

“Betty’s developing _such_ a sweet tooth!” mourned her mother. “I have

to limit her rigidly.”

“Why?”

“You wouldn’t let the child stuff herself on sweets all the time,”

protested Grandma Sharpless, scandalized.

“Nor on anything else. But if she craves sweets, why not let her have

them at the proper time?”

“Well, in my day children ate plain food and were thankful.”

“Hm! I’m a little dubious about the thankfulness. And in your day

children died more frequently and more easily than in ours.”

“They weren’t pampered to death on candy, anyway!”

“Possibly they weren’t pampered quite enough. Take the Cherub, here,”

he tossed Betty in the air and whisked her to his shoulder. “She’s a

perfect little bundle of energy, always in motion. She needs

energy-producing food to keep going, coal for that engine. Sugar is

almost pure carbon; that is, coal in digestible form. Of course she

wants sweets. Her little body is logical.”

“But isn’t it bad for her teeth?” asked Mrs. Clyde.

“No; nor for her last year’s overshoes or her tin dog’s left hind leg,”

chuckled the Health Master. “Sometimes I marvel that the race has

survived all the superstitions surrounding food and drink.”

“In my father’s household,” said Mr. Clyde, “the family principle was

never to drink anything with meals. The mixture of solids and liquids

was held to be bad. Another superstition, I suppose.”

“At that rate, bread and milk would be rank poison,” said Dr. Strong.

“Next to food, water has got the finest incrustation of old-wives’

warnings. Now, there’s some doubt whether a man should eat whenever he

wants to. Appetite, in the highly nervous American organization, is

sometimes tricky. But thirst is trustworthy. The normal man is

perfectly safe in drinking all the water he wants whenever he wants

it.”

“I can still remember the agonies that I suffered when, as a boy, I had

scarlet fever, and they would allow me almost no water,” said Mr.

Clyde.

“One of medicine’s direst errors,” said Dr. Strong. “Nobody will ever

know how much that false and cruel system has added to our death-rate

in the past. To-day a practitioner who kept water from a fever

patient—unless there were unusual complications—would be properly

citable for malpractice. By the way,” he continued, “we’re changing our

views about feeding in long illnesses. Typhoid patients have always

been kept down to the lowest possible diet, nothing but milk. Now, some

of the big hospitals are feeding typhoid cases, right through the

fever, on foods carefully selected for their heat and energy values,

with the result that not only has the patient more strength to fight

the disease, but he pulls through practically free from the emaciation

which has always been regarded as inevitable.”

“Can I have my candy?” inquired Bettina, holding to her own point.

“If it’s good, sound candy. Now I’m going to utter an awful heresy.

Generally speaking, and in moderation, what you want is good for you.”

“Pure anarchy,” laughed Mr. Clyde.

“Not at all; the law of the body, always demanding what is best for its

development.”

“Well, I want,” declared Robin, with a sudden energy, “to take off

these hot, scratchy flannels.”

“Too late now,” said the Health Master, “until spring. You’ve been

wearing them all winter. But another year, if I have my way, you won’t

have to put them on.”

“You’d let him tempt pneumonia by going through a winter with light

summer underwear?”

“Unless you get out an injunction against me,” smiled the physician.

“Bobs had a pretty tough time of it for the first week when he changed

to flannels. He’s thin-skinned, and the rough wool irritated him pretty

badly. In fact, he had a slight fever for two days. It isn’t worth that

suffering. Besides, he’s a full-blooded youngster, and doesn’t need the

extra warmth. You can’t dress all children alike in material any more

than you can dress them all from the same pattern.”

“Then I want to leave off mine, too,” announced Charles.

“Nonsense! You little ruffian, you could wear sandpaper on that skin of

yours. Don’t talk to me, or next time I see you without your overcoat

I’ll order a hair shirt for you.”

“I’ve never thought much about the children’s clothes, except to change

between the seasons,” confessed Mrs. Clyde. “I supposed that was all

there is to it.”

“Not wholly. I once knew a man who died from changing his necktie.”

“Did he put on a red tie with a pink shirt?” interestedly queried

Manny, who had reached the age where attire was becoming a vital

interest.

“He changed abruptly from the big puff-tie which he had worn all

winter, and which was a regular chest-protector, to a skimpy bow,

thereby exposing a weak chest and getting pneumonia quite naturally.

Yet he was ordinarily a cautious old gentleman, and shifted the weight

of his underclothes by the calendar—a rather stupid thing to do, by the

way.”

“On the first of November,” began Grandma Sharpless severely—

“Yes, I know,” cut in the Health Master. “Your whole family went into

flannels whether the thermometer was twenty or seventy. And we’ve seen

it both, more than once on that date.”

“What harm did it ever do them?”

“Bodily discomfort. In other words, lessened vitality. Think how much

nervous wear is suffered by a child itching and squirming in a scratchy

suit of heavy flannels on a warm day.”

“Children can’t be changing from one weight to another every day, can

they?” asked Mrs. Clyde.

“No need of that. But in the fall and spring we can regulate that

matter a little more by the thermometer, and a little less by the

almanac. There is also the consideration of controlling heat. Now,

Charley, what would you think of a man who, in June, say, with the

mercury at seventy-five, wandered around in a heavy suit and his winter

flannels.”

“I’d think he was sick,” said the nine-year-old promptly, “or else

foolish. But what makes you ask me?”

“Just by way of calling your attention to the thermometer, which in

this room stands at seventy-nine. And here we all sit, dressed

twenty-five per cent warmer than if we were out doors in a June

temperature several degrees colder. You’re the Committee on Air and

Light, Charley. I think this matter of heat ought to come within your

province.”

“And it makes you feel so cold when you go out,” said Julia.

“Of course. We Americans live in one of the most trying climates in the

world, and we add to its rigors by heating our houses like incubators.

No room over seventy, ought to be the rule.”

“It’s hard to work in a cold room,” said Mr. Clyde.

“Not when you’re used to it. The Chicago schools that have started

winter roof classes for sickly children, find that the average of

learning capacity goes up markedly in the cold, clean air.”

“But they can’t be as comfortable,” said Mrs. Clyde.

“Much more so. As soon as the children get used to it, they love it,

and they object strenuously to going back into the close rooms. The

body grasps and assimilates the truth; the mind responds.”

“Well, I like to be comfortable as well as anybody,” said Mrs.

Sharpless, “but I don’t consider it the chief end of life.”

“Not the chief end,” assented Dr. Strong; “the chief means.”

“Comfort and health,” mused Mrs. Clyde. “It seems a natural

combination.”

“The most natural in the world. Let me put it into an allegory. Health

is the main line, the broad line, the easy line. It’s the simple line

to travel, because comfort keeps pointing it out. Essentially it is the

line of the least resistance. The trouble with most of us is we’re

always unconsciously taking transfers to the cross-lines. The transfer

may be Carelessness, or Slothfulness, or Gluttony, or one of the

Dissipations in food, drink, work or play; or it may be even Egotism,

which is sometimes a poison: but they all take you to Sick Street.

Don’t get a transfer down Sick Street. The road is rough, the scenery

dismal, and at the end is the cemetery.”

“That’s the end of all roads,” said Grandma Sharpless.

“Then in Heaven’s name,” said the Health Master, “let us take the

longest and sunniest route and sing as we go!”

XI.

THE BESIEGED CITY

To Bettina falls the credit of setting the match to the train. That

lively-minded young lady had possessed herself of a large, red square

of cardboard, upon which, in the midst of the Clyde family circle, she

wrought mightily with a paint-brush.

“What comes after p in ‘diphtheria,’ Charley?” she presently appealed

to her next older brother.

Charley considered the matter with head aslant. “Another p,” he

answered, tactfully postponing the evil moment.

“It doesn’t look right,” announced the Cherub, after a moment’s

contemplation. “Dr. Strong, how do you spell ‘diphtheria’?”

“I? Why, Toots, I spell it with a capital, but leave off the final x,”

replied the Health Master cheerfully. “What kind of a game are you

playing? Quarantining your dolls?”

“It isn’t a game.” Betty could be, on occasion, quite a self-contained

young person.

“What is it, then, if I’m not prying too far into personal matters?”

“It’s for Eula Simms to put on her house.”

“The Simmses _will_ be pleased,” remarked Julia.

“They ought to be,” said Betty complacently. “I don’t suppose they can

afford a regular one like the one we put up when Charley had scarlet

fever, two years ago. And Eula’s big sister’s got diphtheria,” she

added quite casually.

“What’s that?” The Health Master straightened up sharply in his chair.

“How do you know that, Twinkles?”

“Eula told me across the fence this morning. She’s excused from school.

Three other houses on the street have got it, too. I’m going to make

placards for them.”

“And do the work in play that the Health Department ought to be doing

in the deadliest earnest! What on earth is Dr. Merritt thinking of?”

And he went to the telephone to call up the Health Officer and find

out.

“We’re due for a bad diphtheria year, too,” observed Grandma Sharpless,

whose commentaries on practical matters, being always the boiled-down

essence of first-hand observation, carried weight in the household.

“I’ve noticed that it swings around about once in every five or six

years. And it was six years ago we had that bad epidemic.”

“Then there is the influenza epidemic of last spring to consider,” said

Mrs. Clyde. “Dr. Strong told us then that we’d have to pay for that for

months. So, I suppose, the city is still in a weakened condition and

easy soil for diphtheria or any other epidemic.”

“There’s measles already in our school,” said Julia. “That’ll help,

too.”

“Why haven’t you reported it, Junkum?” asked her father. “You’re

Chairman of the Committee on School Conditions of the Clyde Household

Protective Association.”

“We only found out to-day,” said Bobs, “when they told us maybe school

would close.”

“Three years I’ve been President of the Public Health League,” remarked

Mr. Clyde with a wry face, “and nothing has happened. Now that I’m just

about retiring I hope there isn’t going to be serious trouble. What

does the Health Department say, Strong?” he inquired, turning as the

Health Master entered.

“Something very wrong there. Merritt won’t talk over the ‘phone. Wants

me to come down.”

“This evening?”

“Yes. He’s ill, himself, and badly worried. What do _you_ think?”

“It looks like some skullduggery,” declared Mr. Clyde, borrowing one of

his mother-in-law’s expressive words. “Is it possible that reports of

diphtheria are being suppressed, and that is why the infected houses

are not placarded?”

“If it is, we’re in for trouble. As I told you, when I undertook the

Chinese job of keeping this household in health,” continued the Health

Master, addressing the family, “I can’t reliably protect a family in a

community which doesn’t protect itself. There are too many loopholes

through which infection may penetrate. So the Protective Association,

in self-defense, may have to spur up the city to its own defense.

First, though, I’m going over the throats of this family and take

cultures.”

“You don’t think,” began the mother anxiously, “that the children—”

“No; I don’t think they’ve got it. But the bacteriological analysis

will show.”

“I hate to have it done,” said Mrs. Clyde, shuddering. “It seems so—so

inviting of trouble.”

“Superstition,” said Dr. Strong, smiling. “Aren’t you just as anxious

to find out that they _haven’t_ got the infection as that they have?

Come on, Bettykin; you’re first.” And, having prepared his material, he

swabbed the throats of the whole company, after which he took the

cultures with him to Dr. Merritt.

It was late when he returned, but he went direct to Mr. Clyde’s room.

“It’s worse than I thought, Clyde,” said he. “We’re in the first stage

of a bad epidemic. The reports have been suppressed by Mullins, the

Deputy Health Officer.”

“What did he do that for?”

“To cover his own inefficiency. He is City Bacteriologist, also, and

the law requires him, in time of epidemic, to make bacteriological

analyses. He doesn’t know how. So he simply pigeonholed the case

reports as they came in.”

“How did such a rascal ever get the job?” asked Clyde.

“Political pull. The most destructive of all the causes of death which

never get into the mortality records,” said Dr. Strong bitterly.

“How many cases?”

“Three or four hundred, at least. It’s got a good start. And more than

that of measles. While he was in the business of suppressing, Mullins

threw a lot of measles reports aside, too. I don’t like the prospect.”

“The first thing to do,” decided Mr. Clyde, with customary energy, “is

to get Dr. Mullins out. I’ll call an emergency meeting of the Public

Health League to-morrow. By the way, Julia has some matters to report

from school.”

“Well, suppose we call an emergency meeting of our own of the Household

Protective Association for to-morrow evening,” suggested Dr. Strong.

“Since we’re facing an epidemic, we may as well fortify the youngsters

as soundly as possible.”

Directly after dinner on the following evening the Association was

called to order by Mr. Clyde, presiding. It was a full meeting except

for Maynard, who had not returned for dinner. First Dr. Strong reported

that the cultures from the throats of the family had turned out

“negative.”

“So we don’t have to worry about that,” he remarked.

Whereupon Mrs. Clyde and her mother drew long breaths of relief.

“And now for the Committee on School Conditions,” said Mr. Clyde.

“All I’ve heard of in our school is measles,” announced Julia. “There’s

a lot of the boys and girls away.”

“No diphtheria?” asked Mr. Clyde.

“I asked Miss Brown that at recess, and she looked queer and said,

‘None that we know of.’ But I heard of some cases in the Academy; so I

told Manny.”

“Why Manny?” asked Mrs. Clyde.

“He’s Chairman of the Committee on Milk, and the Bliss children from

our dairy go to the Academy.”

“That explains why Maynard isn’t here, then,” said the grandmother. “I

suppose he’s gone out to the farm.”

“Yes. He took the interurban trolley out, to make sure that they’d be

careful about keeping the children away from the dairy.”

“Good team-work, Junkum,” approved the presiding officer.

“And I asked Mary and Jim Bliss to come around to-morrow to see Dr.

Strong and have him look at their throats.”

“You ought to be drawing a salary from the city, young lady,” said the

Health Master warmly. “You may have stopped a milk-route infection; one

of the hardest kind to trace down.”

“They’re talking of closing school after to-morrow,” concluded the

girl.

“The very worst thing they could do,” declared Dr. Strong.

“The very best, I should think,” controverted Grandma Sharpless, who

never hesitated to take issue with any authority, pending elucidation

of the question under discussion. “If you group a lot of children close

together it stands to reason they’ll catch the disease from each

other.”

“Not unless you group them too close. Arm’s length is the striking

distance of a contagious disease. _There’s_ a truth for all of us to

remember all the time.”

“If it _is_ a truth,” challenged Mrs. Sharpless. “One of the surest and

one of the most important,” averred the Health Master. “The only

substance that carries the contagion of diphtheria or measles is the

mucus from the nose or throat of an infected person. As far as that can

be coughed or sneezed is the danger area. Of course, any article

contaminated with it is dangerous also. But a hygienically conducted

schoolroom is as safe a place as could be found. I’d like to run a

school in time of epidemic. I’d make it a distributing agency for

health instead of disease.”

“How would you manage that?”

“By controlling and training the pupils hygienically. Don’t you see

that school attendance offers the one best chance of keeping track of

such an epidemic, among the very ones who are most liable to it, the

children? Diphtheria is contagious in the early stages, as soon as the

throat begins to get sore, and before the patient is really ill. Just

now there is an indeterminate number of children in every one of our

schools who have incipient diphtheria. What is the one important thing

to do about them?”

“Find out who they are,” said Julia quickly. “Exactly. If you close

school to-morrow and scatter the scholars far and wide in their homes,

how are we going to find out this essential fact? In their own homes,

with no one to watch their physical condition, they will go on

developing the illness unsuspected for days, maybe, and spread it about

them in the process of development. Whereas, if we keep them in school

under a system of constant inspection, we shall discover these cases

and surround them with safeguards. Why, if a fireman should throw

dynamite into a burning house and scatter the flaming material over

several blocks, he’d be locked up as insane. Yet here we propose to

scatter the fire of contagion throughout the city. It’s criminal

idiocy!”

“If we could only be sure of controlling it in the schools,” said

Grandma Sharpless, still doubtful.

“At least we can do much toward it. As a matter of fact the best

authorities are very doubtful whether diphtheria is a ‘school disease,’

anyway. There is more evidence, though not conclusive, that measles

is.”

“Surely we don’t have to consider measles now, in the face of the

greater danger.”

“Most emphatically we do. For one thing, it will increase the

diphtheria rate. A child weakened by measles is so much the more liable

to catch any other disease which may be rife. Besides, measles spreads

so rapidly that it often kills a greater total than more dangerous

illnesses. We must prepare for a double warfare.”

“At the Public Health League meeting,” said Mr. Clyde, “the objections

to closing the schools came from those who feared that an official

acknowledgment that the city had an epidemic would hurt business.”

“A viciously wrong reason for being right,” said the Health Master. “By

the way, I suppose that Dr. Mullins will be Acting Health Officer, now

that Merritt is unfortunately out of it. Merritt went to the hospital

in collapse after the session of the Board of Education at which he

appeared, to argue for keeping the schools open.”

“No,” said Clyde. “We’ve blocked Mullins off. But it’s the next step

that is troubling me. What would you do, Strong, if you were in

control?”

“Put a medical inspector in every school,” answered Dr. Strong

instantly. “Send home every child with the snuffles or an inflamed

throat. And send with him full warning and instructions to the parents.

Have daily inspection and instruction of all pupils.”

“Can you make school children understand?”

“Why not? It is merely a matter of telling them repeatedly: ‘Keep your

fingers and other objects away from your mouth and nose. Wash your

hands frequently. Brush your teeth and rinse your mouth well. And keep

your distance. Remember, that the striking distance of disease is arm’s

length.’ Then I would break class every hour, throw open every window,

and march the children around for five minutes. This for the sake of

improved general condition. Penalize the pupils for any violation of

hygienic regulations. Hygienic martial law for war-time.”

“Good!” applauded Mr. Clyde. “So much for the schools. What about the

general public?”

“Educate them to the necessity of watching for danger signals; the

running nose, the sore throat, the tiny pimples on the inside of the

mouth or cheek which are the first sign of measles. Above all, furnish

free anti-toxin. Make it free to all. This is no time to be higgling

over pennies.”

“I don’t like the principle of coddling our citizens by giving to those

who can afford to pay.”

“Better coddled citizens than dead children. Unless you give out free

anti-toxin, physicians to families where every dollar counts will say,

‘Oh, it may not be diphtheria. We’ll wait and see, and maybe save the

extra dollars.’ Diphtheria doesn’t wait. It strikes. Then there is the

vitally important use of anti-toxin as a preventive. To render a whole

family immune, where there is exposure from a known case of diphtheria,

is expensive at the present rates, but is the most valuable expedient

known. It is so much easier to prevent than to cure.”

“All right; I give in. What else?”

“Education, education, education; always education of the public, till

the last flame is stamped out. Get the press, first; that is the most

direct and far-reaching agency. Then organize public meetings,

lectures, addresses in churches and Sunday schools, talks wherever you

can get people together to listen. That is what I’d do.”

“Go ahead and do it, then.”

“Easily said,” smiled the Health Master. “Who am I, to practice what I

preach?”

“Provisional Health Officer of Worthington,” came the quick answer. “I

have the Mayor’s assurance that he will appoint you to-morrow if you

will take the job.”

“I’ll do it,” said the Health Master, blinking a little with the

suddenness of the announcement, but speaking unhesitatingly, “on two

conditions: open schools and free anti-toxin.”

“I’ll get that arranged with the Mayor. Meantime, you have unlimited

leave of absence as Chinese physician to the Clyde household.”

“But the Household Protective Association will have to back me,” said

Dr. Strong, as the meeting broke up. “I can’t get along without you.”

Swiftly and terribly moves an epidemic, once it has gained headway. And

silence and concealment had fostered this onset from the first. Despite

the best efforts of the new Health Officer, within a week the streets

of the city were abloom with the malign flower of the scarlet for

diphtheria and the yellow for measles.

“First we must find out where we stand,” Dr. Strong told his

subordinates; and, enlisting the services of the great body of

physicians,—there is no other class of men so trained and inspired to

altruistic public service as the medical profession,—he instituted a

house-to-house search for hidden or undiscovered cases. From the best

among his volunteers he chose a body of auxiliary school inspectors,

one for every school, whom he held to their daily régime with military

rigor.

“But my patients are dying while I am looking after a roomful of

healthy children,” objected one of them.

“You can save twenty lives by early detection of the disease, in the

time it takes to save one by treatment,” retorted the disciplinarian.

“In war the individual must sometimes be sacrificed. And this is war.”

The one bright spot in the early days of the battle was Public School

Number Three which the twins and Bettina attended. The medical

inspector who had this assignment was young, intelligent, and an

enthusiast. Backed by Dr. Strong, and effectively aided by the Clyde

children, he enforced a system which brought prompt results. In every

instance where a pupil was sent home under suspicion,—and the first

day’s inspection brought to light three cases of incipient diphtheria,

and fifteen which developed into measles, besides a score of suspicious

symptoms,—Julia, or Robin Clyde, or one of the teachers went along to

deliver printed instructions as to the defense of the household, and to

explain to the family the vital necessity of heeding the regulations

until such time as the physician could come and determine the nature of

the ailment. Within a week, amidst growing panic and peril, Number

Three was standing like an isle of safety. After that time, not a

single new case of either disease developed from exposure within its

limits, and in only two families represented in the school was there

any spread of contagion.

“It’s the following-up into the house that does it,” said Dr. Strong,

at an early morning meeting of the Household Protective Association (he

still insisted on occasional short sessions, in spite of the

overwhelming demands on his time and energies, on the ground that these

were “the only chances I get to feel the support of full understanding

and sympathy”), “that and the checking-up of the three carriers we

found.”

“What’s a carrier?” asked Bettina, who had an unquenchable thirst for

finding out things.

“A carrier, Toodlekins, is a perfectly well person who has the germs of

disease in his throat. Why he doesn’t fall ill himself, we don’t know.

He can give the disease to another person just as well as if he were in

the worst stages of it himself. Every epidemic develops a number of

carriers. One of the greatest arguments for inspection is that it

brings to light these people, who constitute the most difficult and

dangerous phase of infection, because they go on spreading the disease

without being suspected. Now, I’ve got ours from Number Three

quarantined. If I could catch every carrier in town, I’d guarantee to

be in control of the situation in three weeks.”

“Our reports show over twenty of them discovered and isolated,” said

Mrs. Clyde, who had turned her abounding energies to the organization

of a corps of visiting nurses.

“Perhaps I’d better say something about carriers in my next talk,” said

Grandma Sharpless, whose natural gift as a ready and convincing

speaker, unsuspected by herself as well as her family until the night

when she had met and routed the itinerating quack on his own platform,

was now being turned to account in the campaign for short talks before

Sunday schools and club gatherings.

“Develop it as part of the arm’s-length idea,” suggested the Health

Master. “Any person may be a carrier and therefore a peril on too close

contact. Tell ‘em that in words of one syllable.”

“Never use any other kind when I mean it,” answered Mrs. Sharpless.

“What about that party at Mrs. Ellery’s, Manny?”

“I’ve got that fixed,” replied Maynard Clyde, who had been acting as

general factotum for the household in its various lines of endeavor.

“Mrs. Ellery gave a party to our crowd Friday night,” he explained to

Dr. Strong, “and Monday one of the Ellery girls came down with

diphtheria.”

“What have you done about it?” asked the Health Master.

“Notified all the people who were there. That was easy. The trouble is

that a lot of the fellows have gone back to college since: to Hamilton,

Michigan, Wisconsin, Harvard, Columbia,—I suppose there were a dozen

colleges represented.”

“And you think that’s too wide a field for the follow-up system?” asked

his father.

“Why, no,” said the boy thoughtfully. “I figured that starting a new

epidemic would be worse than adding to an old one. So I went to Mrs.

Ellery and got a list of her guests, and I wrote to every college the

fellows have gone back to, and wrote to the fellows themselves. They

probably won’t thank me for it.”

“They ought to give you a life-saving medal each,” declared Dr. Strong.

“As for the situation here”—his face darkened—“we’re not making any

general headway. The public isn’t aroused, and it won’t be until we can

get the newspapers to take up the fight. The thing that discourages me

is that they won’t help. I don’t understand it.”

“Don’t you? I do,” said Clyde grimly. “Their advertisers won’t let ‘em

print anything about it. As I told you in the matter of closing the

schools, business is frightened. The department stores, theaters, and

other big advertisers are afraid that the truth about the epidemic

would scare away trade. So they are compelling the papers to keep

quiet.”

“Idiots!” cried Dr. Strong. “Suppressing news is like suppressing gas.

The longer you do it, the more violent the inevitable explosion. But

when I called on the editors, they didn’t say anything to me about the

advertising pressure. It was, ‘We should be glad to help in any way,

Dr. Strong. But an alarmist policy is not for the best interests of

Worthington; and the good of our community must always be the first

consideration.’—Bah! The variations I’ve heard on that sickening theme

today! The ‘Press,’ the ‘Clarion,’ the ‘Evening News,’ the ‘Telegram,

the ‘Observer’—all of ‘em.”

“You didn’t mention the ‘Star,’” said Grandma Sharpless.

“That rag? It’s against everything decent and for everything rotten in

this town,” said Clyde.

“When I need a danger signal,” observed the old lady with her most

positive air, “I’ll wave any kind of rag. The ‘Star’ has circulation.”

“Yes,” admitted the Health Master, “and among the very class we want to

reach. But what’s the use?”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Sharpless. “But I’m going to find out.”

One hour later she walked into the editorial sanctum of Mr. “Bart”

Snyder, editor, proprietor, and controlling mind of as “yellow” a sheet

as ever subsisted on a combination of enterprise, real journalistic

ability, and blackmail. Mr. Snyder sat in a perfect slump of apparent

languor, his body sagging back into his tilted chair, one foot across

his desk, the other trailing like a broken wing along the floor, his

shrewd, lined face uplifted at an acute angle with the cigar he was

chewing, and his green hat achieving the most rakish effect possible to

a third slant. His brilliant gray eyes were narrowed into a hard

twinkle as he surveyed his visitor.

“Siddown,” he grunted, and shoved a chair toward her with the grounded

foot.

Grandma Sharpless did not “siddown.” Instead she marched over to a spot

directly in front of him, halted, and looked straight into the hard,

humorous face.

“Bartholomew Snyder,” said she crisply, “I knew you when you were a

boy. I knew your mother, too. She was a decent woman. Take off that

hat.”

The Snyder jaw fell so unpremeditatedly that the Snyder cigar dropped

upon the littered floor. One third of a second later, the Snyder foot

descended upon it (and it was a twenty-cent cigar, too) as the Snyder

chair reverted to the perpendicular, and the Snyder hat came off. The

Snyder countenance quivered into articulation and therefrom came a

stunned, “Well, I’ll be—”

“No, you don’t! Not in _my_ presence,” cut in his visitor. “Now, you

listen.”

“I’m listening,” he assured her in a strangled murmur.

She seated herself and threw a quality of rigidity into her backbone

calculated to impress if not actually to appeal. “I want your help,”

she said.

“Fine, fat way you’ve got of opening up a request for a favor,” he

retorted, recovering himself somewhat, and in a particularly

discouraging voice. But the shrewd old judge of human nature before him

marked the little pursing at the corners of the mouth. “I’ll bet I know

what it is.”

“I’ll bet all the money I’ve got in the bank and my best gold tooth

thrown in you don’t,” was the prompt retort.

“There’s a sporting proposition, all right,” cried the editor in great

admiration. “I thought you was going to ask me to let up on the city

administration now you’ve got one of the fat jobs in the family, with

your Dr. Strong.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t have to make guesses for a living,”

returned his caller scornfully. “Pitch into the administration as hard

as you like. I don’t care. All I want is for you to print the news

about this diphtheria epidemic.”

“Is that all?” There was a profound sardonicism in the final word.

“Come to think of it, it isn’t. I want you to print some editorials,

too, telling people how to take care of themselves while the disease is

spreading.”

“Anything more?”

“Well, you might do the same thing about the measles epidemic.”

“Harr-rr-rr!” It was a singular growl, not wholly compounded of wrath

and disgust. “Doc Strong send you here?”

“No; he didn’t!”

“Don’t bite me. I believe you.”

“Will you publish some articles?”

“Look-a-here, Mrs. Sharpless; the ‘Star’ is a business proposition. Its

business is to make money for me. That’s all it’s here for. People say

some pretty tough things about me and the paper. Well, we’re pretty

tough. We can stand ‘em. Let ‘em talk, so long as I get the circulation

and the advertising and the cash. Now, you want me to print something

for you. Come down to brass tacks; what is there in it for me?”

“A chance to be of some real use to your city for once in your life,”

answered Grandma Sharpless mildly. “Isn’t that enough?”

Bart Snyder threw back his head and laughed immoderately. “Say, I like

you,” he gurgled. “You’ve got nerve. Me a good Samaritan! It’s so rich,

I’m half a mind to go you, if it wasn’t for losing the advertising.

Wha’ d’ ye want me to say, anyway, just for curiosity and cussedness?”

“Just give the people plain talk,” explained the visitor. “Talk to ‘em

in your editorials as if you had ‘em by the buttonhole. Say to them:

‘Do you want to get diphtheria? Well, you don’t need to. It’s just as

easy to avoid it as to have it. Are you anxious to have measles in your

house? It’s for you to decide. All you need is to take reasonable care

against it. Infectious disease only kills foo—careless people.’”

“Let it go at ‘fools,’” interjected Mr. Snyder, smiting his thigh. “Go

on.”

“Then I’d give them simple, straight advice; tell them how to recognize

the early symptoms; how and where to get anti-toxin. And I’d scare ‘em,

too. I’d tell ‘em there are five thousand cases of the two diseases in

town, and there will be ten thousand in a week unless something is

done.”

Up rose the editor-proprietor, kicked over his own chair, whirled Mrs.

Sharpless’s chair with its human burden to the desk, thrust a pencil

into her hand, and slapped down a pad before her.

“Write it,” he adjured her.

“Who? Me?” cried Mrs. Sharpless, her astonishment momentarily

overwhelming her grammar. “Bless you, man! I’m no writer.”

“Talk it, then, and make your pencil take down the talk. I’ll be back

in a minute.”

That minute stretched to a good half-hour, during which period Grandma

Sharpless talked to her pencil. When Mr. Snyder returned, he had with

him a mournful-looking man who, he explained occultly, “holds down our

city desk.”

“This is our new Health Editor,” chuckled Snyder, indicating Mrs.

Sharpless. “How many cases did you say there were in town, ma’am?”

“Five thousand or more.”

The city editor whistled whisperingly. “Where do you get that?” he

asked.

“From Dr. Strong.”

“That’s news,” said the desk man. “I didn’t suppose it was half so bad.

If only we dared print it!”

“No other paper in town dares,” suggested the visitor insinuatingly.

“Makes it all the more news,” remarked Snyder. “What if we played it up

for a big feature, eh?”

“Advertisers,” said the city editor significantly.

“Let ‘em drop out. They’ll come back quick enough, when we’ve shown up

one or two and told why they quit us. And think of the splash we can

make! Only paper in the city that dares tell the truth. We’ll rub that

into our highly respectable rivals. I’ll make you a proposition,” he

added, turning to his caller.

“Make it.”

“You know I’ve hammered at Tom Clyde pretty hard. I don’t cotton to

that saintly, holier-than-thou reform bunch at all. Well, let Clyde

come into the ‘Star’ with a signed statement as President of the Public

Health League, and we’ll make it the basis of a campaign that will rip

this town wide open for a couple of weeks. I’d like to see him in my

paper, after all the roasting we’ve handed him.” And the malicious face

wrinkled into another grin.

“You’ve bought a bargain,” stated Mrs. Sharpless. “The statement will

be ready to-night. And another from Dr. Strong for good measure.”

“Fine business!” ejaculated the “Star’s” owner. “Not open to a

reasonable offer in the newspaper game, are you?” he added, laughing.

“No? Well, I’m sorry.”

“Would there be any use in my seeing the editors of the other papers?”

asked Mrs. Sharpless.

“Watch them fall in line,” was the grim response. “Before we’ve been

out a day, they’ll be tumbling over each other to make the dear,

deluded public believe that they’re the real pioneers in saving the

city from the deadly germ.”

“Well, here are my notes, if you can make anything out of them.”

“Eh? Notes?” said the newspaper man, who had been glancing at the

sheets over Mrs. Sharp-less’s shoulder. “Oh—ah. Yes, of course. All

right. Glad to have metcher,” he added, politely ushering her to the

door. “I’ll send a reporter up for the statements at eight o’clock.”

“Thank you very much, Bartholomew Snyder,” said Grandma Sharpless,

shaking hands.

“Not a bit of it! Thanks the other way. You’ve given me a good tip in

my own game. Watch me—us—wake ‘em up to-morrow.”

Only the combined insistence of Grandma Sharpless and diplomacy of the

Health Master overrode Mr. Clyde’s angry objections to “going into that

filthy sheet” when the matter was broached to him that evening. For the

good of the cause he finally acceded. And next morning the “Star” was a

sight! It blazed in red captions. It squirmed and wriggled with

illustrations of alleged germs. It shrieked in stentorian headlines. If

the city had been beset by all the dogs of war, it couldn’t have blared

more martial defiance against the enemy. It held its competitors up to

infinite scorn and derision as mean-spirited shirks and cowards, and

slathered itself with fulsome praises as the only original prop of

truth and righteousness. And, as the centerpoint and core of all this,

flaunted-the statement and signature of the Honorable Thomas Clyde,

President of the Worthington Public Health League—with photograph. The

face of Mr. Clyde, as he confronted this outrage upon his sensibilities

at the breakfast table, was gloom itself until he turned to the

editorial page. Then he emitted a whoop of glee. For there,

double-leaded and double-headed was a Health Column, by “Our Special

Writer, Grandma Sharpless, the Wisest Woman in Worthington. She will

contribute opinions and advice on the epidemic to the ‘Star’

exclusively.” (Mr. Snyder had taken a chance with this latter

statement.)

“Let me see,” gasped the old lady, when her son-in-law made known the

cause of his mirth. Then, “They’ve published that stuff of mine just as

I wrote it. I didn’t dream it was for print.”

“That’s what makes it so bully,” said the Health Master. “You’ve got

the editorial trick of confidential, convincing, man-to-man talk down

fine. What’s more, you’ll have to keep it up, now. Your friend, Snyder,

has fairly caught you. Well, we need an official organ in the

household.”

Vowing that she couldn’t and wouldn’t do it, nevertheless the new

“editor” began to think of so many things that she wanted to say that,

each day, when a messenger arrived from the “Star” with a polite

request for “copy,” there was a telling column ready of the Health

Master’s wisdom, simplified and pointed by Grandma Sharpless’s own

pungent, crisp, vigorous, and homely style. Thanks largely to this, the

“Star” became the mouthpiece of an anti-epidemic campaign which

speedily enlisted the whole city.

But the “yellow” was not to have the field to itself. Once the cat was

out of the bag, the other papers not only recognized it as a cat with

great uproar, but, so to speak, proceeded to tie a can to its tail and

pelt it through the streets of the city. As a matter of fact, no

newspaper wishes to be hampered in the publishing of legitimate news;

and it was only by the sternest threats of withdrawal of patronage that

the large advertisers had hitherto succeeded in coercing the press of

Worthington. Further coercion was useless, now that the facts had found

their way into type. With great unanimity and an enthusiasm none the

less genuine for having been repressed, the papers rushed into the

breach. The “Clarion” organized an Anti-Infection League of School

Children, with officers and banners. The “Press” “attended to” the

recreant Dr. Mullins so fiercely that, notwithstanding his pull, he

resigned his position in the Health Department because of “breakdown

due to overwork in the course of his duties,” and ceased to trouble, in

official circles. Enterprising reporters of the “Observer” caused the

arrest of thirty-five trolley-car conductors for moistening transfers

with a licked thumb, and then got the street-car company to issue a new

form of transfer inscribed across the back, “Keep me away from your

Mouth.” It fell to the “Evening News” to drive the common drinking-cup

out of existence, after which it instituted reforms in soda fountains,

restaurants, and barber shops, while the “Telegram” garnered great

glory by interspersing the inning-by-inning returns of the baseball

championship with bits of counsel as to how to avoid contagion in the

theater, in the street, in travel, in banks, at home, and in various

other walks of life. But the “Star” held foremost place, and clinched

it with a Sunday “cut-out” to be worn as a badge, inscribed “Hands Off,

Please, Until It’s Over.” All of which, while it sometimes verged upon

the absurd, served the fundamentally valuable purpose of keeping the

public in mind of the peril of contact with infected persons or

articles.

Slowly but decisively the public absorbed the lesson. “Arm’s length”

became a catch-phrase; a motto; a slogan. People came slowly to

comprehend the methods by which disease is spread and the principles of

self-protection.

And as knowledge widened, the epidemic ebbed, though gradually. Serious

epidemics are not conquered or even perceptibly checked in a day. They

are like floods; dam them in one place and they break through your

defenses in another. Inexplicable outbreaks occur just when the tide

seems to have turned. And when victory does come, it may not be

ascribable to any specific achievement of the hygienic forces. The most

that can be said is that the persevering combination of effort has at

last made itself felt.

The red placards began to disappear; many of them, alas! only after the

sable symbol of death had appeared beneath them. Dr. Strong and his

worn-out aides found time to draw breath and reckon up their accounts

in human life. The early mortality had been terrific. Of the cases

which had developed in the period of suppression, before antitoxin was

readily obtainable, more than a third had died.

“Nobody will ever be indicted for those murders,” said Dr. Strong to

Mr. Clyde grimly. “But we have the satisfaction of knowing what can

really be done by prompt work. Look at the figures after the free

anti-toxin was established.”

There was a drop in the death rate, first to twenty per cent, then to

ten, and, in the ebb stage of the scourge, to well below five.

“How many infections we’ve prevented by giving anti-toxin to immunize

exposed persons, there’s no telling,” continued Dr. Strong. “That

principle of starting a back-fire in diphtheria,—it’s exactly like

starting a back-fire in a prairie conflagration,—by getting anti-toxin

into the system in time to head off the poison of the disease itself,

is one of the two or three great achievements of medical science. There

isn’t an infected household in the city today, I believe, where this

hasn’t been done. The end is in sight.”

“Then you can go away and get a few days’ rest,” said Grandma

Sharpless, who constituted herself the Health Master’s own health

guardian and undiplomaed medical adviser, and to whom he habitually

rendered meek obedience; for she had been watching with anxiety the

haggard lines in his face.

“Not yet,” he returned. “Measles we still have with us.”

“Decreasing, though,” said Mrs. Clyde. “Our nurses report a heavy drop

in new cases and a big crop of convalescents.”

“It is those convalescents that we must watch. I don’t want a

generation of deaf citizens growing up from this onset.”

“But can you prevent it if the disease attacks the ears?” asked Clyde.

“Almost certainly. We’ve got to inspect every child who has or had

measles in this epidemic, and, where the ear-drum is shiny and concave,

we will puncture it, by a very simple operation, which saves serious

trouble in ninety per cent of the cases, at least. But it means

constant watchfulness, for often the infection progresses without

pain.”

“At the same time your inspectors will watch for other after-effects,

then,” suggested Mrs. Sharpless.

“Exactly. It’s my own opinion that nearly all the serious diseases of

the eye, ear, liver, kidney, heart, and so on in early middle age are

the late remote effects of what we carelessly call the lesser diseases

of childhood. It is only a theory as yet; though some day I think it

will be proved. At any rate, we know that a serious and pretty definite

percentage of all deafness follows measles; and we are going to carry

this thing through far enough to prevent that sequel and to turn over a

reasonably cleaned-up situation to Dr. Merritt.”

“He’s out of danger, by the way,” said Mrs. Clyde, “and will be back at

his desk in a fortnight.”

“Well; he’ll have an easier job henceforth,” prophesied Mr. Clyde.

“He’s got an enlightened city to watch over. And he can thank you for

that, Strong.”

“He can thank the Clyde family,” said Dr. Strong with feeling. “I could

have done little without you back of me.”

“It’s been interesting to extend the principles of our Household

Protective Association to the larger world,” smiled Clyde. “Beyond our

own city, too, in one case. Manny has had a letter from the Professor

of Hygiene at Hamilton College, where he enters next year, thanking him

on behalf of the faculty for his warning about young Hyland who was

exposed to diphtheria at the Ellery party. He went back to Hamilton a

few days after and was starting in to play basketball, which would have

been decidedly dangerous for his team mates; but the authorities, after

getting Manny’s letter, kept him out of the gymnasium, and kept a watch

on him. He developed the disease a week later; but there has been no

infection from him.”

“There’s direct result,” approved Dr. Strong. “That’s what I call

spreading the gospel.”

“Grandma’s our real revivalist, at that,” said Julia. “The children at

Number Three pay more attention to her column than they do to what the

teachers tell them. The principal told us that it was the greatest

educational force for health that Worthington had ever known.”

“Only reflected wisdom from you, young man,” said Grandma Sharpless to

the Health Master. “Thank goodness, I’m through with it. I’m so sick of

it that I can’t look at writing materials without wanting to cut the

ink bottle’s throat with my penholder. Bart Snyder has let me off.

What’s more, he sent me a check for $250. Pretty handsome of him. But

I’m going to send it back.”

“Why waste good money, grandma?” drawled Mr. Clyde.

“You wouldn’t have me keep it, would you, for doing that work?”

“Who said anything about keeping it? But don’t feed it back to Bart

Snyder. Why not contribute it to the Public Health League? It’s always

got a handsome deficit.”

“In graceful recognition of my having a son-inlaw as president of it, I

suppose.”

“I’m not president any more. My term was up last night. They didn’t

honor me with a reelection,” said Mr. Clyde, with a rather too obvious

glumness, which, for once, escaped the sharp old lady.

“The slinkums!” she cried. “After all the time and work you’ve given to

it!”

“Well,” said the ex-incumbent philosophically, “there’s one comfort.

They’ve put a better man in my place.”

“No such a thing,” declared his mother-in-law, with vehement

partisanship. “They couldn’t find one. Who was it?”

“Give you one guess.”

“Was it you, young man?” queried she, fixing the Health Master with a

baleful eye.

“Oh, no; a better man than I,” he hastened to assure her.

“Well, in the name of sakes, who, then?”

“You,” said Mr. Clyde, grabbing the old lady by both shoulders and

giving her a vigorous kiss. “Unanimously elected amidst an uproar of

enthusiasm, as the ‘Star’ puts it. Here it is, on the first column of

the front page.”

For the first time in the history of the Clyde household, the senior

member thereof gave way to an unbridled license of speech, in the

presence of the family.

“Well, I vum!” said Grandma Sharpless.

XII.

PLAIN TALK

“What do you find so interesting in that paper, Strong?” asked Mr.

Thomas Clyde, from his place in the corner of the big living-room.

Dinner was just finished in the Clyde household, and the elders were

sitting about, enjoying the easy and intermittent talk which had become

a feature of the day since the Health Master had joined the family.

From outside, the play of lively voices, above the harmonized

undertones of a strummed guitar, told how the children were employing

the after-dinner hour. Dr. Strong let the evening paper drop on his

knees.

“Something that has set me thinking,” he said.

“Don’t you ever give that restless mind of yours a vacation, young

man?” inquired Grandma Sharpless, looking up from her game of

solitaire.

“All that is good for it. Perhaps you’d like to share this problem, and

thus relieve me of part of the responsibility.”

“Do go on, if you’ve found anything exciting,” besought Mrs. Clyde,

glancing up with her swift, interrogating smile. “The paper seemed

unusually dull to me.”

“Because you didn’t read quite deep enough into it, possibly.” He

raised the journal, folded it neatly to a half-page, and holding it

before his eyes, began smoothly:—

“Far, far away, as far as your conscience will let you believe, in the

Land of Parables—”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Mr. Clyde. “That ‘Land of Parables’ sounds

as if we were going to have some Improving Information.” He regarded

his friend and adviser with a twinkling eye. “Ought the children to

miss this?”

“That is for you to decide later,” said the Health Master gravely. And

he resumed:—

“Far, far away, as far as conscience will let you believe, in the Land

of Parables, there once stood a prosperous and self-contented city. Men

lived therein by rule and rote. Only what their fathers before them had

believed and received did they believe and receive. ‘As it hath been,

so it is now and ever must and shall be,’ was the principle whereby

their lives were governed. Therefore they endured, without hope as

without complaint, the depredations of a hideous Monster who preyed

upon them unceasingly.

“So loathsome was this Monster that the very thought of him was held to

taint the soul. His name was sealed away from the common speech. Only

the boldest men spoke of him, and then in paraphrases and by

circumlocutions. Fouled, indeed, was the fame of the woman who dared so

much as confess to a knowledge of his existence.

“From time to time the wise and strong men of the city banded together

and sallied forth to drive back other creatures of prey as they pressed

too hard upon the people. Not so with the Monster. Because of the ban

of silence no plan could be mooted, no campaign formulated to check his

inroads. So he grew great and ever greater, and his blood hunger fierce

and ever more fierce, and his scarlet trail wound in and out among the

homes of the people, manifest even to those eyes which most sedulously

sought to blind themselves against it.

“Seldom did the Monster slay outright. But where his claws clutched or

his fangs pierced, a slow venom crept through the veins, and life was

corroded at its very wellsprings. Nor was this the worst. Once the

blight fell upon one member of a household, it might corrupt, by hidden

and subtle ways, the others and innocent, who knew not of the curse

overhanging them.

“Upon the foolish, the reckless, and the erring the Monster most

readily fastened himself. But man nor woman nor child was exempt.

Necessity drove young girls, struggling and shuddering, into the

Monster’s very jaws. The purity of a child or of a Galahad could not

always save from the serpent-stroke which sped from out the darkness.”

“One moment, Strong,” broke in Mr. Clyde. “You’ve read this before?”

“I know what is in it, if that is what you mean. Why?”

“Nothing,” hesitated the other, glancing toward his wife and her

mother. “Only, I suspect it isn’t going to be pleasant.”

“It isn’t pleasant. It’s true.”

Grandma Sharpless laid down her cards. “Let him go on, Tom,” she said

decisively. “We have no ban of silence in this house.”