When I was necessarily obliged to quench my thirst at a public drinking-place I drank up close to the _right_ side of the handle of the cup, as I thought that would be the spot least contaminated. In order not to breathe any more germs than I could possibly avoid, I kept away from theatres and places where motley crowds assemble and shunned dust and impure air as I would a leper. I had read that there was on the market a sanitary mask to be worn when going to places where there was the greatest danger of coming into contact with germs, but I did not think that I could work up sufficient nerve to appear in public muzzled in this way. I knew from reading how many million microbes of different kinds there are inhabiting every cubic inch of air, and it was indeed appalling to think what even one of them would do for me if it chanced to hit me in a vulnerable spot. I did the best I could and kept my windows open wide both day and night, that some of these little imps of Satan might ride out on the breeze. _On a cold day I would sit shivering with my overcoat and heavy wraps on, while the wind was blowing a hurricane through any room._ At this some of the neighbors were wont to smile, but when they rather intimated that I was a little off I reminded them that Columbus and all other men who lived in advance of the times were regarded as hopeless lunatics. [Illustration: The wind was blowing a hurricane through my room.] One evening when I went to bed with my windows open as usual the weather was quite warm, but the temperature suddenly fell during the night and I chilled, in consequence of which I nearly had pneumonia. After that I thought it best to exclude some of the elements and try to put up with the germs. I went to the other extreme of avoiding fresh air. My main reason for doing so was that I read that one could become immune to his own brand of germs--the kind that constantly live in your own house and eat your own food. I thought this seemed reasonable, on the same principle that parents can get used to their own children easier than they can to other people's pestiferous brats. I don't know that there is science about any of this--no means of escape is all there is to it. Of late years I have changed my opinion regarding germs, the same as I have done over and over regarding everything else. We are all apt to think that the only good germs are like good Indians--dead ones. Perhaps most of these microscopic creatures are conservative and play some useful part in life's economy if we only knew what it is. Then we don't know whether microbes are the cause or the product of disease--just as we don't know which came first, the hen or the egg. What we don't know in this matter would make a stupendous volume. At any rate it is of no use to run from germs, for they are omnipresent.