ation, but "just can't bear to see the
dear child hurt." As for Fred, he breathes through his mouth, talks
through his nose, grows indifferent to boy's fun, fails to earn
promotion at school, and fears that "I won't be strong in spite of all
the patent medicine I've taken." Father, mother, and Fred feel profound
pity for the city child living so far from nature.

Adenoids are not monopolized by children whose parents are ignorant of
the importance of them and of physical examination. Last summer I was
asked by a small boy to buy some chocolate. A glance at his cigar box
with its two or three uninviting things for sale showed that the boy
was really begging. He had thick lips, open mouth, "misty" eyes, and a
nasal twang. I asked him if his teacher had not told him he had lumps
back of his nose and could not breathe right. He said, "No." I
explained then that he could make a great deal more money if he talked
like other boys, stepped livelier, and breathed as other people
breathe. He said he had "been by a doctor onct but didn't want to be
op'rated." I turned to my companion and asked, "Have you never noted
those same lines on your boy's face?" Although he had been lecturing on
mouth breathers, he had never noticed his own boy's trouble. He
hastened home and found the infallible signs. The mother declared it
could not be true of her boy. About five months before, their family
physician had said of the child's earache, "The same inflammation of
the nasal passages that causes earache causes adenoids; you must be on
the lookout." Although in the country, the boy's appetite was not good
and his zest for play had flagged. They had looked for the trouble to
back generations and in psychology books,--everywhere but at the boy's
face, in his mouth, and in his nose. After the operation, which took
less than two minutes, the appetite was ravenous, the eyes cleared,
and the spirit rebounded to its old buoyancy that craved worlds to
conquer.

The new personal experience made a deep impression upon my friend's
mind. He wanted everybody to know how easy it was to overlook a child's
distress. One person after another had a story to tell him; even the
janitor said: "You'd ought to have seen our John at sixteen. He spent a
week by the hospital." The only people who do not seem to know more
than the new convert are the mouth breathers whom he religiously stops
on the street.

The indexes to adenoids and large tonsils for the teacher to