FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



Magazine, and still later the Company published two o£ my 

 books. 



After this beginning with the Century Dictionary, I was able 

 to get enough outside work to keep my family going. I worked 

 on the Standard Dictionary, and also wrote many articles for 

 the New International Encyclopedia and did a lot of other work 

 of that general character. 



And then there were not infrequent magazine articles and 

 lectures, and of course the Insect Book and the Mosquito Book 

 in 1901 and the House Fly Disease Carrier in 191 1. 



I mentioned lectures in the last paragraph. Like so many 

 young men, I was especially self-conscious, in fact, awkwardly 

 so, before any kind of an audience, although, judging from some 

 of the men I have known, mine was not an extreme ca:e. I had 

 always dreaded anything of the sort in college and could not 

 hold my own in a public debate. As time went on in Washing- 

 ton, I read papers before scientific societies there and elsewhere, 

 but I had never dared attempt a lecture without manuscript. My 

 knees trembled at the very thought. 



It must have been in the very early spring of 1898 that I 

 received a letter from Dr. J. M. Taylor, the president of Vassar 

 College. Dr. Taylor was not only a very charming man, but 

 he was a very wise one. He had thought out a plan that I think 

 was unique for a college president. He made up his mind that 

 the students at Vassar did not know enough about the intimate 

 details of their government, and decided that he would go to 

 Washington and stay, if possible, at the Cosmos Club. There 

 he felt sure he would meet men who were doing big things 

 for the government in a quiet way, and he thought he could 

 induce some of them to come up to Poughkeepsie and tell the 

 girls about it. So he came down, and I put him up at the Club 

 and introduced him to just the men he expected to meet. 



[82] 



