hideousness?... Upon the doorsteps weary mothers are nursing little
babies who will never know the meaning of innocent childhood, but will
be versed in the immoral lore of the Underworld before they learn their
alphabet. Ragged children covered with filth play about the pushcarts
and the horses in the street, while their mothers chatter in greasy
doorways, or shout from upper windows into the hordes below, or clatter
about creaky floors, preparing the foul mess of tainted edibles which
constitutes a meal."

With many other phases of this gruesome picture this author deals, and
then concludes with the following: "But in the rookeries which, like
their inmates, skulk and hide out of sight in the crowded street; in
these ramshackle structures which line the back alleys, and there breed
their human vermin amid dirt and rags--in these there is no direct
sunlight throughout the long year. Rookeries close to the front windows,
shutting out light and air, and rookeries close to the rear windows, and
rookeries close to each side, and never a breath of fresh air to
ventilate one of these holes wherein men and women and children wallow
in dirt, and live and fight and drink and die, and finally give way to
others of their kind." So long as such conditions as these continue in
our country, sanitation as a manifestation of patriotism will not have
done its perfect work, and the stars and stripes of our flag will lack
somewhat of their rightful luster.

=Patriotism in daily life.=--When the influences of hygiene and of home
economics, taught as life processes and not merely as prerequisites for
graduation, by teachers who regard them as forms of patriotism,--when
these influences have percolated to every nook and cranny of our
national life,--to the homes, the streets and alleys, the farms, the
shops, the factories, and the mines, such conditions as these will
disappear, and we as a nation shall then have a clearer warrant for our
profession of patriotic interest in and devotion to the welfare of our
country as a whole. But so long as we can look upon insanitary
conditions without a shudder; so long as we permit dirt to breed disease
and crime; so long as we make our streams the dumping places for debris;
so long as we tolerate ugliness where beauty should obtain; and so long
as our homes and our farms betray the spirit of shiftlessness,--so long
shall we have occasion to blush when we look at our flag and confess our
dereliction of