“No. I won’t go as far as that. They may exercise a check in some cases. But I will say this: that all our cumbersome and expensive and often harassing hygienic measures in the contagious diseases haven’t made good. Obviously, if they had, we should see a diminution of the ills which they are supposed to limit. There is no diminution. No, we’re on the wrong tack. Until we know what the right tack is, we perhaps ought to keep on doing what we can in the present line. It’s a big, complicated subject, and one that won’t be settled until we find out what scarlet fever, measles, and whooping-cough really are, and what causes them. While we’re waiting for the bacteriologist to tell us that, the soundest principle of defense that we have is to keep the body up to its highest pitch of resistance. That is why I support medical inspection for schools as an essential measure.” “To repair the children without closing the schools, if I may modify Dr. Goler’s epigram,” suggested Mr. Clyde. “Exactly. Eventually we shall have to build as well as repair. A very curious thing is happening to Young America in the Eastern States. The growing generation is shrinking in weight and height.” “Which is almost contradictory enough for a paradox,” remarked Mr. Clyde. “It’s a melancholy and literal fact. You know, there’s a height and weight basis for age upon which our school grading system rests. The authorities have been obliged to reconstruct it because the children are continuously growing smaller for their years. _There’s_ work for the inspection force!” “You’d put the children on pulleys and stretch ‘em out, I suppose!” gibed Grandma Sharpless. “That might work, too,” replied the doctor, unruffled. “The Procrustean system isn’t so bad, if old Procrustes had only sent his victims to the gymnasium instead of putting them to bed. Yes, a quarter of an hour with the weight-pulleys every day would help undersized kiddies a good deal. But principally I should want the school-inspectors to keep the youngsters playing.” “You don’t have to teach a child to play,” sniffed Grandma Sharpless, with womanly scorn of mere man’s views concerning children. “Pardon me, Mrs. Sharpless, you taught your children to play.” “I! Whatever makes you think that?” “The simple fact that they didn’t die in babyhood.” Mrs. Sharpless looked at him with a severity not unmingled with suspicion. “Sometimes, young man,” she observed, “you talk like a—a—a gump!” “Take that, Strong!” said Mr. Clyde, joining in the doctor’s laugh against himself. “Facts may sometimes sound foolish,” admitted Dr. Strong. “If they do, that’s the fault of the speaker. And it _is_ a fact that every mother teaches her baby to play. Watch the cat if you don’t believe me. The wisest woman in America points out in her recent book that it is the mother’s playing with her baby which rouses in it the will to live. Without that will to live none of us would survive.”