FIGHTING THE INSECTS 

 "Why," I replied, "I thought that the United States won that 



war." 



"Oh, no," she said. "Our school histories all say that Mexico 

 won it." 



This reminded me strongly of the collection of school books 

 published in the Southern States during our Civil War. I re- 

 member an arithmetic, for example, in which one of the prob- 

 lems was: "If one Southerner can whip seven Yankees, how 

 many Yankees can eleven Southerners whip?" And this, of 

 course, reminds me of the books on American history that were 

 published during my schoolboy days and the prejudices against 

 England that were built up in the minds of all the children in 

 the States by the lengthy accounts of the Revolutionary War. 



My last trip to Mexico was in 1904. This was the journey on 

 which I was studying especially, perhaps, the geographical 

 distribution of the Yellow Fever mosquito, and at the end of the 

 investigation I learned that the dread disease had just broken 

 out at Laredo on the Rio Grande. I knew that the State of Texas 

 would be up in arms with a rigorous quarantine, including a 

 shotgun barrier along the river, and I had no wish to be held 

 in a detention camp. So I went to the office of the Morgan Line 

 Steamers in the City of Mexico to look for passage by steamer 

 from Vera Cruz to New York. I bought my ticket, and in pay- 

 ing for it brought out a United States government transporta- 

 tion request. 



"Oh," said the clerk, "you are one of those government fellows. 

 One of them was in here a few weeks ago, bought a ticket on 

 one of those requests, and borrowed fifty dollars from me, 

 which he has never returned." 



I overcame his scruples and got my ticket, and afterwards dis- 

 covered that the man who negotiated the loan was a member of 



[176] 



