“It’s not a slang term any more; it’s a medical term to describe a typical result of mouth-breathing. The diversion of the breath destroys the even arch of the teeth, pushes the central teeth up, giving that squirrel-like expression that is so unpleasantly familiar, lengthens the mouth from the lower jaw’s hanging down, and sharpens the whole profile to an edge, and an ugly one. Adenoids!” “My tall girl I thought at first was dull, but I found the poor thing was a little deaf,” said Grandma Sharpless. “She’s got a horrid skin; so sallow and rough and pimply. I don’t think her digestion is good. In fact, she said she had trouble with her stomach.” “Naturally. Her teeth are all out of place from facial malformation caused by mouth-breathing. That means that she can’t properly chew her food. That means in turn that her digestion must suffer. That, again, means a bad complexion and a debilitated constitution. Adenoids! What’s your analysis, Mr. Clyde?” “That boy? He’s two grades behind where he should be in school. It takes him some time to get the drift of anything that’s said to him. I should judge his brain is weak. Anyway, I don’t see where he keeps it, for the upper part of his face is all wrong, the roof of the mouth is so pushed up. The poor little chap’s brain-pan must be contracted.” “Perfectly correct, and all the result of adenoids again. The boy is the worst example I’ve been able to find. But all three of the children are terribly handicapped; one by a painful homeliness, one by a ruined digestion, and the boy by a mental deficiency—and all simply and solely because they were neglected by ignorant parents and still more ignorant school authorities.” “Would you have the public schools deal with such details?” asked Mr. Clyde. “Certainly. Have you ever heard what Goler, the Health Officer of Rochester, asked that city? ‘Oughtn’t we to close the schools and repair the children?’ he asked, and he kept on asking, until now Rochester has a regular system of looking after the noses, mouths, and eyes of its young. They want their children, in that city, to start the battle of life in fighting trim.” “But you don’t see many misshapen children about,” objected Mrs. Sharpless. “Then it’s because you don’t look. Call to your mind Hogarth’s caricatures. Do you remember that in his crowds there are always clubfooted, or humpbacked, or deformed people? In those days such deformities were very common because medical science didn’t know how to correct them in the young. To-day facial deformities, to the scientific eye, are quite as common, though not as obvious. We’re just learning how to correct them, and to know that the hatchet-face is a far more serious clog on a human being’s career than is the clubfoot.” “If Betty had a clubfoot, of course—” began Mrs. Clyde.