And there are not even any swinging-doors to hide the sundae fiends. Shamelessly they imbibe their drinks with the world passing the unshaded windows, looking in at them. A shocking state of affairs. Yet who is doing anything about it? No wonder little Alice, of the pale face, does not eat much luncheon. Her mother worries over her anemic condition; yet she will not take the time to investigate the child’s daily habits. She never inquires how she spends her allowance. And young Bobby, who formerly was so rosy and plump, deteriorates into a consumptive-looking boy. No, he doesn’t smoke; and as yet he has not acquired the hip-flask habit. What, then, is the matter with him, that he drops out of baseball and has no heart for tennis; that he is backward in his studies, and sleeps restlessly? On his way to school he stops in at the soda-fountain. And on his way home, he stops in once more. Surely the Government should issue cards, and make it a misdemeanor for a clerk to serve more than one soda a week to minors--and grown-ups. The Board of Health should do something about it. You see, if it isn’t one thing it’s another in this troubled world. No sooner do we mop up the saloon than we find other places in need of mopping. Parents and social workers, here is a job for you. Get at it, at once. Forthwith. Instanter. Immediately. The future welfare of the race is at stake. If it were only ginger-pop that the children drank! But here again one cannot control the appetites of human beings. We have closed the corner saloon. Is there no way of closing the corner soda-fountain? It is curious, in these days when there is so much understanding, even among flappers, of psycho-analysis and complexes, that no one seems to have called attention to the fact that the prohibitionists are the greatest living examples of certain distressing inhibitions. That the majority of us should find ourselves suddenly dictated to--told, literally, what we should and should not put into our own little private tummies--is beyond belief. What does a man who has never taken a drink know of the psychology of drink? What does he know of good-fellowship, of the poetry of the toast, of the beauties of _Brüderschaft_? I would as soon think of Dr. Mary Walker telling _Romeo_ and _Juliet_ how to make love. The set lips of the fanatical reformer are the outward evidence of an interior set of corroding inhibitions. Unable to get relief from the tedium of existence in, say, a town like Gopher Prairie, the subject moves, in his or her later years, to Minneapolis or some other larger city, and is next heard of as a professional reformer of one sort or another.