ose who work,
Many to our cause are won, hurrah!

[Illustration]

OUR LITTLE ENEMIES

"Hello, Central, give me 1882, Mrs. Consumption Germ. Oh, is that you, I
am so glad to hear your voice. Do tell me what you have been doing this
long time!"

"Oh, my good friend Pneumonia, I have been hiding away all these years
to keep the doctors from finding me. I did not want them to learn about
me. I feared that they would destroy me entirely.

"But with all my care, do you know that just a few years ago, an old
German doctor pulled me out of my hiding place and showed me to the
world. Since then I and my family have had little peace.

"I have to be mighty careful, or I fear that these doctors who are
turning all sorts of magnifying glasses on my people will finally drive
us from the earth. They already have us on the run. In the meantime we
are playing a game of 'catch me if you can.' Sometimes we get on pencils
or sticks of candy. Then again we roll and turn somersaults on a nice
red apple and are passed from one mouth to another by over-polite
children.

"Sometimes, some of my children swim in the milk or travel on a fly's
foot.

"I don't like sunshine at all. I dote on dark places where the wind does
not blow.

"I like poor people better than rich ones, because the poor have not
money enough to buy good food, fresh air, and rest, the weapons the rich
use to fight us with.

"Last week I went to a Fourth of July celebration on a grain of dust--my
airship, I called it. Whom do you think I saw there? Young Mr. Lockjaw
Germ; do you know I think that he has gotten the big head. Probably the
war in Europe has something to do with it. For I believe that he and his
family are very prominent among the soldiers in Belgium. I hear also
that in America the folks are trying to put him out of business,
especially since fire-crackers are not used so much. Some man had to
start a 'Sane Fourth of July.' That was a sane Fourth of July
celebration that I attended, and I must say that Mr. Lockjaw Germ looked
a bit lonely."

"Do tell me, Mrs. Consumption Germ," said her friend Pneumonia Germ,
"have you heard about the Diphtheria family? They are having a hard
time."

"These French doctors have found something that will even prevent
children from having diphtheria. They call it anti-toxin. I never did
like antis anyway, did you?

"Mrs. Typhoid Germ tells me that her family is not as large as it used
to be,