"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, all because of an anti-toxin." "My, my, what shall we do!" said Mrs. Consumption Germ, "even the school people are after us. I heard Miss Measles and little Master Scarlet Fever say that a doctor comes every day to some of the schools. They said that in some of the school-rooms the teacher had the nerve to hang a placard, on which was printed, 'Prevention Better Than Cure.' "I'll tell you I don't like these new times; this Hygiene the people talk of is a regular ogre to our children. "In some schools the teachers are even having lunches for the little children who are pale and thin. They are having their eyes examined. Some are having adenoids taken out, just to make those children so strong that we can't catch them. "I thought that I had a fair chance to get little Jimmy Brown, but his teacher talked to his mother one day at recess. The next day his mother whisked him off down town and had the doctor take the adenoids from behind his nose. Now he is as strong as any little boy, because he can breathe through his nose. So I lost my chance at him, you see."