“One of our neighbor’s boys had always been considered stupid. The teachers didn’t know what was wrong with him; he just didn’t grasp things. He also made a great deal of amusement for the school by his awkwardness; he couldn’t walk across the room without bumping into things. They have just by accident discovered that he’s nearly blind. The oculist can do a good deal for him even yet, but he can never bring his sight back perfectly, and his school years have been wasted. That could have been prevented.
“In a garden in our little village at home, a young woman with a twisted back works all day with the flowers—they are the closest friends she has. I’ve noticed that she is always there in the morning and afternoon when the school children go past. They pick the flowers through the fence and go on unrebuked, and I’ve seen her stand watching them up the road, especially the little five-year-olds, with tears in her eyes and a look almost rebellious. She won’t ever have any children, you see. And it’s all because no one noticed the curvature when it was just beginning and could have been straightened. She was sent to school to sit in the same old painful seat day after day so she might ‘pass the entrance.’
“Just one other case. On the farm next ours, a girl with brown eyes like a Madonna’s, and the
proverbial crown of red-gold hair, is suffering everything from the consciousness of a cruel disfigurement. When she was three years old an adenoid growth blocked the natural breathing passage, and the only thing left for her to do was to keep her mouth open and catch whatever air she could. Of course, the result was that the upper jaw narrowed and the teeth protruded, taking the character entirely away from the lower part of the face. She kept having colds, and became so deaf that when she was about grown up it was necessary to operate and remove the growth. Her hearing came back pretty well, but the natural lines of her face will never come back. An operation at the beginning would have changed her whole life.
“Now we want to have a doctor come and examine the children in the schools, and then if there’s anything wrong we want to have a clinic and get them taken care of. We don’t know just how to go about it. Will you help us?”
The Representative was not indifferent or pessimistic. He knew that other Women’s Institutes had engineered Medical Examination campaigns in the public schools, that they had even held school clinics, and brought a surgeon to operate on the youngsters who needed it, and he knew that in some way the Department of Agriculture stood back of them in the undertaking. That was as far as his interest had gone.
As for helping personally with the procedure, he would rather blunder into a hornets’ nest than get mixed up in the detail of a women’s organization. As usual, when he needed help, he thought of Ruth. She would understand just how to map out the whole campaign. She was working for the Department, and if Mrs. Burns would write, no doubt they would send her. Of course, he would be pleased to give any incidental help he could.
Ruth came and outlined the plan. The Institute would first have to get the school board’s consent to let them go on with the work. Then they could get the local doctors to look the children over and see if there were any suffering from the troubles that could be remedied. If they could have a nurse to help with the inspection and to visit the homes in a neighborly way and report what the kiddies needed, so much the better. If they wanted to make the campaign of real, practical help, they could hold a clinic and have the children actually treated.
It was well on in December before the clinic could be arranged, and the general excitement kept the telephones busy and caused considerable delay in picking the geese for the Christmas market. Mrs. Burns had offered to turn her house into a hospital for the day and other members of the Institute were contributing supplies of sheets and towels for the occasion. Mrs.
Evison had dropped in at an Institute meeting to express her delighted approval of the plan and to say that her daughter would be pleased to drive their car all day, if necessary, to fetch the children to and from the clinic. Billy placed the Department of Agriculture’s car at their service, praying in secret that they wouldn’t send him out alone with any of the patients. A surgeon, young, but notoriously successful, was being brought from the city, and Ruth was coming to help.