18 THE HOUSE FLY 



ing of it. Touching my forehead with his wand I became 

 clairvoyant, and before my eyes, as on a bioscope screen, I 

 beheld a mother, ignorant of the laws of health and hygiene, 

 feeding her children. I saw those children growing up to 

 manhood and womanhood with weakened constitutions due 

 to lack of sufficient physical exercise ; worrying over tasks 

 when they should be asleep in bed ; eating between meals, 

 and of indigestible and harmful foods and drinks. I saw 

 them as young men and women going forth, one as the 

 mother of a home, the other to earn the wherewithal to 

 keep the occupants of a home in comfort. I see armies of 

 microbes seething in the gutters, in garbage barrels, in 

 filth everywhere. Again I see the House Fly, ever and 

 anon, flitting into that home, and upon it cling swarms of 

 disease microbes. 



The scene changes, and I behold the mother dying, with 

 her mourning husband and children around her bedside. 

 Years go by and I again look into that once happy home, 

 and find the father has already been smitten, and is slowly 

 dying of tuberculosis, and there is but one child left of five. 

 Turning to the Sage in sorrow, I ask why man should be 

 afflicted thus. He replied, " My son, there are God-made 

 laws governing every department of life. If these Laws of 

 God are violated, whether ignorantly or wilfully, the conse- 

 quences are the same. Those parents possessed physical 

 bodies, weakened in every part by long-continued abuse of 

 the laws of Hygiene and Health. Consequently the natural 

 defences or disease-resisting powers, which in robust , healthy 

 bodies are able to, in most instances, repel the attacks of 

 disease microbes, were too feeble to resist their onslaughts. 

 " So long," proceeded the Sage, " as men and women are 



