Lord Turlington's residence was dark but for a light in the hall. Joe climbed down from the box, ran up the steps, and pulled the bell. A servant opened the door.

"I've got to see his lordship. Won't keep him but a moment."

"Now then," warned the flunky, "be off. Clear out of here."

"It's very important, sir. I've got something to say to him. I must see him just for a moment, sir." "Get out of here! Be off with you." The man was closing the door.

"It's something I f-found, sir. In them clothes he lent me. Don't you remember me, sir?" Joe was trying to open his faded top-coat to show his evening things. "I was 'ere-a couple of hours ago-dining, like, with his lordship."

The flunky sniffed. "Yes, you were," he said. "Tell me another. Now then, be off with you-or I'll call a policeman and have you arrested."

Joe struggled to get inside. "I've got to see him, sir," he cried. "He'll think I stole the money-and I wouldn't have him think that for anything. I'll only keep him a minute. Please, sir-please-"

"What's all this racket, Thomson?"

Lord Turlington, in dressing-gown and pajamas, was coming down the stairs.

"Here's a drunken cabby, your lordship. Says he wants to see you.'

"Oh-hello!" said Turly. "By Jove! you made a damned fine mess of our plan. But it turned out to be a jolly good speech. Ripping. They went away fully convinced you were Lord

Marvin, you know.
Marvin, you know. They'll tell
everybody. No end of fun.'
Joe produced the envelop.

"I f-found this 'ere, m'lord-in the p-pocket of your coat. There's five ten-pound notes in it, and I—and I-" He was out of breath, like— couldn't speak.

"Do you mean to say you came back here"-Lord Turlington was smiling-"at this hour-just because of that? Look here! you old ass! I put that money there-specially for you. It's yours-you silly old duffer! Now, trot off—and let me get a bit of sleep."

Joe opened his mouth. “Oo, Gawd! All this? Mine?”

"Come and see me again-sometime next week. There may be a small job for you-in my stables. I'll see."

"Oo-oo-" Joe was trying to say something.

"Good night-and thanks for the speech." Lord Turlington yawned and turned to his servant. "Thomson! kindly show Lord Marvin out, I must have a bit of sleep. And courtesy, Thomson-the greatest courtesy should Lord Marvin, and his 'keb,' ever call on me again."

In a daze, Joe Swan went down the steps, climbed the box, and drove away. In a daze he remained until he found himself passing the Houses of Parliament. Then he straightened and sat up.

"Charlie, old 'orse," he gulped, "let's you and me never say another word against 'em. Lords, Charlie? Why there ain't any better-'earted people on the face of the earth than lords-and don't you forget it."

T

"F YOUR fertilizer is not agreeing with your land,the Government will send a specialist, but if the food is not agreeing with the baby, why we have to find out what's the matter ourselves, and lots of times parents mean well but they don't know much." Thus the national jester, Will Rogers.

The answer is May Day-Child Health Day, designed by the American Child Health Association and fathered by Herbert Hoover, to bring that information to these parents. It is a curiously American solution, one that was discovered during the war. Whenever it is desired that the American people should do anything about anything, we set aside a day. Not, of course, a day to do this thing but a day to ask every one to do it. We have had Thrift Days and Red Cross Days, Anti-Tuberculosis Days, Mother's Days, Father's Days. And the program is ever the same. The schools are approached and the pulpits thunder forth the message. The newspapers are approached and print the releases. The stores are approached and hang the posters. The movies are approached and put on four-minute speeches. The women are approached and put on programs. We are all familiar with the tactics. Another time and another country

might suggest a survey, endow a chair at a university, or pass a law. Not so America. We name a day.

And yet is it as foolish as I make it seem? Is there a quicker or a more effective way to fix an idea in the minds of one hundred million people? Repetition and concentration-are these not the cardinal points in advertising? And what is this but advertising? To another time and another country the survey, the courses of study, the law. But for Americans of to-day advertising is the way. And it is as a piece of advertising—a sublimation of advertising, but none the less advertisingthat May Day-Child Health Day is set aside.

The Child Health Association desired to improve the health of our children. Before anything could be accomplished it was necessary to focus the thought of the nation upon the need. Now to focus the attention of a preoccupied and rushing people upon one idea is a difficult undertaking. There are a myriad ideas playing upon that mind for attention. There are a myriad channels for reaching that mind, a myriad instruments for impressing it. To use but one of them, even a dozen of them, is to be in competition with other appeals, other instruments.

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But if all those channels can have the idea turned into them, if all those instruments can be adjusted to that one use, if only once-a start is made. But the mind of the public is a fickle one. If one channel is used one day and another the next week there will still be competition; but if all these agencies for reaching the thought of the people be turned upon this need of good health for children the very same day, the trick will be done.

And here was the day, made to order, May Day, the festival of spring and youth, when young and old went to the fields to gather the first flowers in which the fairies dwelt who, if welcomed, would bring Plenty, Rain and Sunshine to the homes. What easier than to give it a new significance and meaning, as bringing health and happiness to the childhood of the land?

I have discussed the reason for this idea of May Day at some length because there is abroad in the land a reaction against this day-habit. Breakfast Food Day, and Tea Day, and Roll Your Own Day, and Buttermilk Day, and Bob Your Hair Day, and Brush Your Teeth Day, and Kiss Your Wife Day. Yes, seriously, a man once came to me with a welldefined program to launch a Kiss Your Wife Day. They have been made ridiculous. But there are days and days. There are also Christmas Day, Thanksgiving Day, Easter and the Fourth of July. What are they but days consecrated to a certain idea and purpose? Christmas to the idea of friendliness and love; Thanksgiving to the idea of plenty and gratitude; Easter to the thought of immortality and resurrection; and the

Fourth of July to that of patriotism. True, they and their ideas have come down to us hoary with tradition. They are hallowed by custom and enriched with sentiment. We have no choice but to accept them and give our own interpretation to their meaning. But still, we would not willingly forgo them. They do far more for us than snatch a day from work. Perhaps, all told, they are more potent in determining our national character than pulpit and press combined-they and the ideas which they stimulate and exercise in us. Yet once they were unknown. They had their beginnings. They were initiated and grew into institutions, grew because the idea they celebrated had life, because they filled a need.

But is there any reason why we today must stop with them? Is there any reason why we may not add another to these festal days, another to be devoted to another idea, another need? Oh, but, some one will say, they were not created; they were inherited from paganism and adapted to our Christian faith.

True enough. But so was May Day inherited. It has from pagan times been dedicated to the idea of spring, young budding life. Why not give it a new interpretation, put it to and make it serve our modern needs?

Such, indeed, was the thought of those who chose May Day as the day on which to focus thought upon an ideal of perfected childhood. Surely, thought they, there is room on our calendar for a Children's Day. And surely a Children's Day must be dedicated to the ideal of making all children well and happy.

Not just another day. That was not what they desired. But to add to

the great quartet of Days another that in its turn should gather tradition and so should come to stimulate emotion and stir us to new endeavors. Such things come gradually. But the first step was taken four years ago when the American Child Health Association asked that May Day be celebrated as a day calling attention to the right of every child to joyous positive health. Since then it has expanded in meaning and forms of expression until it has become like the May Pole, a central rallying point for all the diverse activities concerned with the welfare of children.

Many national organizationsamong them the General Federation of Women's Clubs-have used it as a pivot about which they build their campaigns for child betterment. The American Federation of Labor has taken it as a medium through which to inject interest in the health of children into its local groups and auxiliaries. At its convention in Los Angeles last October its Executive Council passed a resolution to urge Congress to set aside May First as official Child Health Day. The health officers of the country have indorsed May Day as part of their official year-round health program. To push this movement there is a May Day organization in every State, in thirty-five of which it is centered in the State Boards of Health.

program to bring this about. Rather it prefers to offer May Day as an instrument to be used by all organizations and any organization desiring to serve children.

It is this very indefiniteness that gives it purpose. It is this very indefiniteness that gives it strength, for there is no limit to what may come out of May Day, to the spirit that may be loosened nor to the standards that may be set—and this though it take years to satisfy the one and reach the other.

Yet it must not be thought that May Day is just an idea, that its inaugurators had no suggestions to make as to its celebration. On the contrary it was stated definitely that May Day was to be the day on which the story of what was happening the other 364 days should be told, that it was the day to look backward and forward, to take an inventory of achievements, challenge weak spots in a community's health work, applaud success as well as make plans for the future. The method, however, by which the community was to do this was left to its own decision, and many and various have they been. The most amusing one was reported from Oklahoma where May Day was the occasion of a Baby Rodeo at the 101 Ranch, Ponca City. It was in reality a model child health conference and was a great success. At Coos River, Marshfield, Oregon the day's program began at eight thirty in the morning, when four boats brought the first load of participants to the school-house, which is at the forks of the Coos River. While the game of baseball and the trackmeet which constituted the entertainment were under way, a free clinic

It is easy to say that May Day has no results and hard to prove that it has. We know when a Maternity Center Association in a restricted area in New York has cut maternal deaths in half by adequate pre-natal care and has reduced still-births and infant deaths to two thirds; but we cannot say how much of that result may have been due to an aroused public interest, nor what part a celebration of May Day may have had in arousing it. We know when the mortality between the ages of five and nine declines from 5.1 to 2.1 in five years; but we can not say how much of this may be due to health work stimulated by May Day. But we do know that one twentieth of all deaths come in the period between birth and school age, that five per cent of all those deaths result from diphtheria and that diphtheria is preventable. If, then, a May Day celebration centers attention on these facts and stimulates a community to undertake immunization, surely it is entitled to some of the credit for the decline of the death-rate. One State reported 16,000 immunized against diphtheria as a result of May Day. The District of Columbia announced the inauguration of a diphtheria immunization campaign so active that it shall be carried forward until diphtheria is stamped out of the District.

But for the most part it is impossible to report or even to know the real results of health work. A case to illustrate this occurred in my own

family. When my son was about thirteen years old he brought home to me a health examination card which had a check opposite "Hearing." He had been thoroughly examined by our family physician. He had never been ill without medical attention. Naturally, then, I was surprised. But I hurried him to an ear specialist. Testing him, he discovered my son's hearing in one ear was impaired, made further examination and found a stopped Eustachian tube. Asked if the child had had an attack of the "flu,” I answered, "Yes." This was the result. Fortunately the deafness soon yielded to treatment. But except for that school examination, it would probably have gone on until too late to cure, before we were aware of it. Yet the saving of his hearing was never reported as a result of health work. Doubtless this is but one of thousands upon thousands of similar

cases.

It is easy enough to have no opinion of public service or public work until one benefits directly from it. Then suddenly one feels the personal gratitude. This came home to me with startling effect when my child was bitten by a dog affected with rabies. Up to that time Pasteur had been to me but a name. From that time on he was my personal benefactor and my debt to him an intimate one. Yet he had done a great thing in making his treatment available and would have been as great had I never thought of him. Thus it is, I think, with public undertakings such as May Day. They seem to mean little until one can trace some direct result from them. But their work is valuable and significant even