FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



come immediately. And so I went. He proved to be a large, 

 florid, important-looking person, and he said, somewhat with 

 the air of a justice of a police court, "Mr. Howard, you are 

 supposed to be the secretary of" (consulting some papers) "an 

 Association of the name of the — ah, yes, here it is — the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of Something-or-other." 



I said, "Yes." 



"Tell me something about this organization," he demanded. 

 "Has it any standing? Is it well known.? Is it a new thing that 

 you are trying to promote?" 



"No," I replied, "it was founded fifty years ago." 



"How many members has it?" 



"Nearly two thousand," I told him. 



"Has it any members in Washington?" 



"Yes," I said; "very many." 



"Tell me the names of some of them." 



"Well," I said, "there is Professor S. P. Langley of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution; Professor Simon Newcomb, the head of the 

 Naval Observatory; Professor Alexander Graham Bell, the in- 

 ventor of the telephone; Chief Justice Fuller of the Supreme 

 Court of the United States " 



"Hold on," he said. "That'll do. It really seems to be a rather 

 meritorious organization," he added in a patronizing way, and 

 then went on: "You see, it does beat the deuce how suspicious 

 some people are! A man up in New Jersey received a notice 

 from you stating that he had been elected a member of this 

 Association and asking for five dollars' entrance fee. He immedi- 

 ately notified the Post Office that this was another fraud, and 

 the case was assigned to me for investigation." 



That evening I looked up the case and found that the man 

 had been proposed for membership by a prominent professor 

 in Princeton University. 



[222] 



