get a good breath, as I thought I
was going to suffocate. Dearie me, why cannot we get air at the bottom
of the pond as well as at the top.

"My heart was beating with fear as I still heard the footsteps, and
presently I could hear voices. A voice said, 'Where are all the members
of this brigade?' What could it mean? What is a brigade? Someone cried
out, 'Here we come to give him the oil.' Looking up I saw a number of
girls and boys, 'The Mosquito Brigade,' they called themselves. They
laughed and talked as if they were a gay crowd. One said, 'Here they
are,' and then said, 'This will get them.'

"I wondered what in the world they could mean. I soon learned what they
were about.

"I smelled a terrible odor, and peeping out from the mud (at the bottom
of the pond in which I was hiding), I saw something thick and terrible
coming down like rain in the pond.

"I ran through the mud to the far end of the pond and hid. Oh, how that
stuff did smell! I thought it would surely smother me.

"I stayed in the mud until the next day. I did not dare peep out. When I
did look out nothing could I see on the bottom of the pond but my dead
brothers and sisters. They had not been as quick as I and had been
smothered by that dreadful stuff. Ah me! I had scarcely strength enough
to live. Life seemed very hard.

"The next thing I remember I was sailing down the pond in a canoe Mother
Nature built for me. It was just large enough to be perfectly
comfortable. I slept the greater part of the time I was in the little
canoe. I stayed in there several days and many times old Father Wind
sent a breeze that nearly upset my little craft. I grew some wings
finally and flew away from that awful pond. I hope that I can always
escape that 'Mosquito Brigade' and that deadly oil. I shall be very busy
for a while and may yet have my revenge, if I can poison some member of
it with malaria germs.

"I have finished my story. Pray, tell me of yourself, Mr. Fly, you look
very happy." "Well," said the fly, "I was hatched in the corner of a
stable where it was damp and warm. I stayed in an egg one day. Then I
was a white crawling thing for nine days. I ate all this time. At the
end of that time I slept a while and then I was grown. I can't tell you
how big I felt the day I first stretched my wings for flight.

"Just listen to what I have done since that happy day. I have crawled
over a person who had small-pox and got some germs which I carried to a
gir