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.