refuge of cowardice and of
stupidity.

Easily eight-tenths of all speech is informing, educative, helpful in
some modest degree; while fully that proportion of silence is due to
lack of ideas, cowardice, or designs that can flourish only in darkness.
It is not the abundance of words, but the scarcity of ideas, that makes
us flee from "the plugless word-spout" and avoid the chatterbox.

Similarly, upon the physical side, because children who breathe through
the mouth are apt to have a vacant expression, to be stupid and
inattentive, undersized, pigeon-breasted, with short upper lip and
crowded teeth, we have leaped to the conclusion that it is a fearsome
and dangerous thing to breathe through your mouth. All sorts of stories
are told about the dangerousness of breathing frosty air directly into
the lungs. Invalids shut themselves scrupulously indoors for weeks and
even months at a stretch, for fear of the terrible results of a "blast
of raw air" striking into their bronchial tubes. All sorts of absurd
instruments of torture, in the form of "respirators" to tie over the
mouth and nose and "keep out the fog," are invented, and those who have
the slightest tendency to bronchial or lung disturbances are warned upon
pain of their life to wrap up their mouths whenever they go
out-of-doors.

As a matter of fact, there is exceedingly little evidence to show that
pure, fresh, open air at any reasonable temperature and humidity ever
did harm when inhaled directly into the lungs. In fact, a considerable
proportion of us, when swinging along at a lively gait on the country
roads, or playing tennis or football, or engaged in any form of active
sport, will be found to keep our lips parted and to inhale from a sixth
to a third of our breath in this way, and with no injurious results
whatever. Nine-tenths of all the maladies believed to be due to
breathing even the coldest and rawest of air are now known to be due to
invading germs.

Nevertheless, mouth-breathing in all ages has been regarded as a bad
habit, and with good reason. It was only about thirty years ago that we
began to find out why. A Danish throat surgeon, William Meyer, whose
death occurred only a few months ago, discovered, in studying a number
of children who were affected with mouth-breathing, that in all of them
were present in the roof of the throat curious spongy growths, which
blocked up the posterior opening of the nostrils. As this mass was made
up of a numb