TUNE:—"YE-HO"
A Folk Tune
[Transcriber's Note: You can play this music (MIDI file) by clicking [here].]
1. We're for happiness and health, hurrah!
But we have no claims on wealth, hurrah!
And we stand for all that's clean,
Flies must go, this sure doth mean,
So we trap and swat and screen, hurrah!
2. We're for sunshine and fresh air, hurrah!
Microbes cannot live in there, hurrah!
Sanitation is our aim,
No mosquitoes do we claim,
For we oil and screen and drain, hurrah!
Chorus:
Then it's rah, rah, rah, for the Hygiene work,
The best we've ever done.
We'll have none who duty shirk,
We'll have only those who work,
Many to our cause are won, hurrah!
OUR LITTLE ENEMIES "Hello, Central, give me 1882, Mrs. Consumption Germ. Oh, is that you, I am so glad to hear your voice. Do tell me what you have been doing this long time!" "Oh, my good friend Pneumonia, I have been hiding away all these years to keep the doctors from finding me. I did not want them to learn about me. I feared that they would destroy me entirely. "But with all my care, do you know that just a few years ago, an old German doctor pulled me out of my hiding place and showed me to the world. Since then I and my family have had little peace. |
"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."
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Consumption Germ, "one can't even hide in an old stump of a tooth. Some man with sharp-looking things tells you that o-u-t spells 'out and begone,' as we used to say in playing the game."
"Do you know I believe that man Pasteur was our greatest enemy?"
"Tell me, who was he?" said Mrs. Consumption Germ.
"Well, he was a man who lived in France. He discovered the germ that killed the silk-worm and also the cause of the loss of grapes in that country.
"The wine and silk merchants of that country paid him immense sums of money for this work.
"He studied all about our friends and relatives, and it was he who first started all this anti-toxin, which saves the people, but which kills us by the millions.
"But with all this great work and the work of their great men, we sometimes catch folks napping. We catch our greatest enemy, the white blood-cells, when they are without their fighting clothes on, and then we get busy. In this way we can make up for a great deal of lost time.
"Of course, you have heard of Dr. Jenner. He was another enemy of ours. He taught the people about vaccination, which keeps them from having small-pox. I am glad to say there will always be a few persons who do not follow these new ideas. If this were not true, one would starve to death."
"I know, Mrs. Pneumonia Germ, that you love close, damp, places. I am sure that fresh air makes you nervous. What will you do now that the factories and mills are to be cleaner and better ventilated? We used to find plenty to do with the old order of things.
"Dr. Sunshine, Dr. Fresh Air, and Dr. Good Food are certainly doing all they can to drive us out of the country.
"We will go to the great cities, and I suspect that, for a long time yet, we can find a home for our little ones in the miserable homes of the poor; and, notwithstanding all this talk of hygiene, health, and sanitation, I believe that some of the homes and factories will always furnish us with hiding places in which to rear our families."
"Well, I must say good-bye, Mrs. Germ, as I see Dr. Fresh Air coming, and I do not care to speak to him; he does not treat me cordially. Good-bye."
QUESTIONS
1. Who was Pasteur? Where did he live? What did he do for the merchants of France?
2. Who was Jenner? What disease did he show the people how to prevent?
3. Why did Jimmy Brown grow well and strong?