Dr. Strong nodded. “Sure to be the undernourished, anaemic, lethargic ones,” said he. “They’re forgetting the lessons of their babyhood. Insensibly they are losing the will to live. But there’s nobody to tell them so. A thorough medical inspection service would correct that. It would include school-nurses who would go to the homes of the children and tell the parents what was the matter. Such a system might not be warranted to keep epidemics out of our schools, but it would stretch out and fill out those meager youngsters’ brains as well as bodies, and fit them to combat illness if it did come. The whole theory of the school’s attitude toward the child seems to me misconceived by those who have charge of the system. It assumes too much in authority and avoids too much in responsibility. “Take the case of John Smith, who has two children to bring up under our enlightened system of government. Government says to John Smith, ‘Send your children to school!’ ‘Suppose I don’t wish to?’ says John Smith. ‘You’ve got to,’ says Government. ‘It isn’t safe for me to have them left uneducated.’ ‘Will you take care of them while they’re at school?’ says John Smith. ‘I’ll train their minds,’ says Government. ‘What about their bodies?’ says John Smith. ‘Hm!’ says Government; ‘that’s a horse of another color.’ ‘Then I’ll come with them and see that they’re looked after physically,’ says John Smith. ‘You _will_ not!’ says Government. ‘I’m _in loco ‘parentis_, while they’re in school.’ ‘Then you take the entire _loco_ of the _parentis_,’ says John Smith. ‘If you take my children away on the ground that you’re better fitted to care for their minds than I am, you ought to be at least as ready to look after their health. Otherwise,’ says John Smith, ‘go and teach yourself to stand on your head. You can’t teach _my_ children.’ Now,” concluded Dr. Strong, “do you see any flaws in the Smith point of view?” “Just plain common sense,” approved Grandma Sharpless. “Clyde,” said Dr. Strong, with a twinkle, “if you don’t stop rubbing a hole in your chin, I’ll have to repair _you_. What’s preying on your mind?” “I am trying,” replied Mr. Clyde deliberately, “to figure out, with reference to the School Superintendent and myself, just how a man who has made a fool of himself can write a letter to another man who has helped the first man make a fool of himself, admitting that he’s made a fool of himself, and yet avoid embarrassment, either to the man who has made a fool of himself or to the other man who aided the man in making a fool of himself. Do you get that?” Dr. Strong rose. “I’m a Chinese doctor,” he observed, “not a Chinese puzzle-solver. That’s a matter between you and your ink-well. Meantime, having attained the point for which I’ve been climbing, I now declare this session adjourned.” IV. THE CORNER DRUG-STORE “No, it won’t add to the attractiveness of the neighborhood, perhaps,” said Mrs. Clyde thoughtfully. “But how convenient it will be!”