of imbeciles,
epileptics, and persons suffering from a contagious or venereal disease;
the saving of babies' lives at $10 a life in Rochester by pure milk
protected and guaranteed by the municipality; the halving of the
diphtheria death rate by the free distribution of antitoxin; the slow
but sure and universal yearly decrease in the Great White Plague--all
these and more are the first, slow, powerful evidences of national
progress.

A LITTLE VICTORY FOR THE GENERAL

BY JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON

ILLUSTRATIONS BY REGINALD BIRCH

Caroline, Miss Honey, and the General were taking the morning air.
Caroline walked ahead, her chin well up, her nose sniffing pleasurably
the unaccustomed asphalt, the fresh damp of the river, and the watered
bridle path. The starched ties at the back of her white pinafore fairly
took the breeze, as she swung along to the thrilling clangor of the
monster hurdy-gurdy. Miss Honey, urban and blase, balanced herself with
dignity upon her long, boat-shaped roller-skates, and watched with
patronizing interest the mysterious jumping through complicated diagrams
chalked on the pavement by young persons with whom she was unacquainted.

The General sucked a clothespin meditatively: his eyes were fixed on
something beyond his immediate surroundings. Occasionally a ravishing
smile swept up from the dimples at his mouth to the yellow rings beneath
his cap frill; he flapped his hands, emitting soft, vague sounds. At
such times a wake of admiration bubbled behind him. Delia, who propelled
his carriage, pursed her lips consciously and affected not to hear the
enraptured comments of the women who passed them.

To the left the trees, set in a smooth green carpet, threw out tiny,
polished, early May leaves; graceful, white-coated children dotted the
long park. Beyond them the broad blue river twinkled in the sun, the
tugs and barges glided down, the yachts strained their white sails
against the purple bluffs of the Palisades. To the right towered the
long, unbroken rows of brick and stone; story on story of shining
windows, draped and muffled in silk and lace; flight after flight of
clean granite steps, polite, impersonal, hostile as the monuments in a
graveyard.

Immobile ladies glided by on the great pleasure drive, like large tinted
statues, dressed altogether as the colored pictures in fashion books,
holding white curly dogs in their curved arms; the coachmen in front of
them seemed carved in plu