Pebruarv, 1919 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



TTHIl 

 a r y 



C 



"THIS Febru- 

 Foo (1 

 Page is not 

 for y o II , Mr. 

 Beekeeper, n o i- 

 is it even for 

 Mrs. Beekeeper 

 this time. It 

 was written for 

 the ladies and 



gentlemen of twelve years old and under. I 

 hope there are some in your family. 



Children, I am going to tell you u true 

 story about a little girl just eleven years 

 old. When she was six she began going to 

 school — just like you did, or will, if you 

 are not yet six, and she went to school 

 every day and studied her lessons and 

 had lots of fun, just like yon. But this 

 fall, when she was in the seventh A grade 

 and everything was going fine, a great, big, 

 terrible giant came to the town where she 

 lived, and he scared the fathers and moth- 

 ers and health officers and school board so 

 badly that they closed the picture shows, 

 the churches and Sunday schools and even 

 the public schools, and 

 kept all the children at 

 home. The reason they 

 did this was because 

 wise people found that 

 the wicked old giant 

 went where there were 

 crowds, and he' liked 

 crowds shut up in close 

 rooms where the air 

 grew bad. The strong- 

 est locks on doors could 

 not keep that old giant 

 out, yet no one ever 

 saw him, for he was in- 

 visible. You know what 

 invisible means, don't 

 you? It means he was 

 just like the air around 

 us, and you could not 

 see him at all. 



But he slipped into 

 crowds and softly 

 toi¥;hed many people, 



and nearly everyone he touched became 

 very sick in a few days, and had dreadful 

 pains, and many of them died. There, you 

 can guess that giant 's name, can 't you. It 

 is ' ' influenza ' ' and we call him ' ' Flu ' ' for 

 short. He came to our town, and he went 

 to your town, and I believe he visited every 

 town in our whole country and nearly every 

 place in the whole world, and everywhere 

 he went he took sickness and sorrow and 

 death. 



Now, this small girl (we may as well call 

 her Helen) is used to studying and learning 

 many interesting things all thru the school 

 year, and when old giant Flu scared the peo- 

 ple so badly that there were no schools she 

 hardly knew what to do with her time. She 

 played and played, and she read all the 

 stories she could find. Just about that time 

 the girl who had been helping her mother 



OUR FOOD PAGE 



Stancy Puerden 



? 



with the house- 

 work went to a 

 city to work in 

 ^ a factory. A s 

 \j Helen 's mother 

 is not very 

 strong, she 

 would have had 

 a hard time if 

 some good fair- 

 ies had not helped her. You did not know 

 that there were fairies outside of story 

 books, did you? Well there are, wonderful 

 ones; and I suspect I could find some right 

 in your own home if I should visit you. 

 Helen 's mother named three of the most 

 hel^jful fairies in their home Jane and Sal- 

 ly and Sukey. These fairies are the best 

 workers you ever saw, but they all need 

 some human being, like you or me, to watch 

 them and work with them. Good Jane is the 

 fairy who cleans rugs and curtains and 

 mattresses; but, altho she does just dandy 

 work, she needs someone to lead her around 

 by the hand to see that she gets over every 

 bit of the rug. As is often said of her, she 

 fairly eats dirt. 



Helen and Jane can 

 work beautifully t o - 

 gether, but to tell the 

 truth, Helen would far 

 rather work with Sally- 

 It 's Sally 's business to 

 wash all the soiled 

 clothing, sheets and pil- 

 low cases, table linen, 

 towels, etc. You have 

 often heard your moth- 

 er talk about how hard 

 it is to find a good wash- 

 erw^oman, haven't you? 

 Helen 's mother feels 

 just that way about it, 

 too, and she does not 

 like to send the washing 

 out of the house to be 

 done in some kitchen 

 which may not be clean 

 and where old giant Flu 

 or some other bad old 

 giant would sprinkle the clothes with dis- 

 ease germs. Also, she does not fancy the 

 light-gray complexion of clothes which visit 

 steam laundries. That is just the way your 

 mother talks, isn't it? 



Sally is big and strong and willing and 

 does very interesting things. She can wash 

 a large tubf ul of clothing in 15 minutes, and 

 when they are clean she can lift all those 

 clothes right out of the water at once and 

 then whirl them around, like a merry-go- 

 round or honey-extractor, until they are as 

 dry as if they had been run thru a wringer. 

 That -is the part of the work where Helen 

 likes to boss Sally, for, wonderful as she 

 is, Sally hasn 't much head on her and has 

 to be directed when to do the different 

 things. After the clothes have been boiled 

 and thoroly rinsed, Helen and her mother 

 give them back to Sally to let her whirl 



