Nobody ever liked flies. The rigorous housewife has long pursued them with waving towel and flapping paper; dark plates of fly poison are set on high places where the children can only occasionally get it; and the dreadful "tanglefoot" hangs here and there, agonizing our ears with the frantic buzzing of its slow-dying victims.
The housewife objected to the fly because he made work for her, speckling all things offensively; and the house-husband objected to him because he walked on his face, or his bald spot, and woke him from needed slumber.
Also no one likes flies floating dankly in the soup, disguised as currants, or sacrificing their legs to the butter. But these distastes are as nothing to the new Terror of the Fly. He is now seen to be a purveyor of disease—we might say the purveyor of disease.
The cat and the dog, the rat and the mouse and their small parasites are responsible for some diseases. The deadly Anopheles only brings malaria, even the Stegonyia has but one fever in his gift, albeit a yellow one; but Musca Domestica deposits on our food, on our clothing, on our pillows, on our very faces, according to the N. Y. Medical Journal, the germs of "tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, summer diarrhea of children, plague, carbuncle, yaws, tapeworm, swine-plague and typhoid fever."
Now that is a nice beast to have in the house! And more especially that is a nice beast to breed in the house, to maintain, feed, shelter, and encourage.
When shall we be willing to face the simple fact that the preparation of food is not a suitable process for the home?
The vegetarian will say that if we eliminate meat all will be well; let him read again my tale of the Cabbage and the Bluebottle. But meat is unquestionably the worst of our food supply as far as flies are concerned. The fly delights in the voluminous cow, even while alive; thrives in her stable, makes free with her milk, and follows her from steak to soup with ceaseless interest. If we had no meat, no fish, no milk, no cheese, no butter, no eggs, we should reduce our bait a little; but there would still remain plenty of fly provender, and also the horses to bring it to our myriad doors.
Why not keep the food and leave out the fly?
Let us for once fairly face the possibility of a home without a kitchen.
Look at it—a real house, in no way different from any other house in front. But it does differ in the back—for it has no back! Its back is another front, just as pretty, just as dignified, just as clean. There is a dining-room in this house, cool, sweet, well-screened from passing, vagrant winged things, but that is all; no kitchen, no kitchen-sink, no raw meat coming in and garbage going out, no grease, no smell of frying.