to counteract the deadly havoc of such bacteria would be the correct step before trying it on himself or other volunteer experimenters. This, happily, is just what Professor Hirschfelder discovered.

On April 21, 1912, a rabbit was vaccinated with about a teaspoonful of the digested and filtered germs of pneumonia and another rabbit with an ounce. On May 8th, these rabbits and another unvaccinated rabbit were injected with enough deadly pneumonia microbes to kill a mastodon. The unvaccinated rabbit died in forty-eight hours, while the two

self. Of ten patients treated with an emulsion of washed microbes, seven had a perfect crisis in twenty-four hours, and the other three within two and a half days.

This is a wonderful result and, if its promise is borne out in general practice, will work a revolution in the health, happiness, and length of life of the human race.

Y

OUNG ladies and gentlemen of the graduating class," once said the chairman of a school committee, "you have now completed your high school course and have received your diplomas. At last you are prepared for life and are standing on its threshold. Accept our congratulations." He sat down, smiling and nodding to a burst of applause.

"Prepared for life are they?" grumbled a friend of mine, a contractor, as we reached the street after the exercises. "These boys are going into industrial work, and they couldn't build a raft on a sinking ship to save their lives."

A few years later it was my satisfaction to invite my complaining friend to the dedication of the Practical Arts School erected by Massachusetts in connection with her normal school in Fitchburg. He found there boys from twelve to fourteen years of age, learning the world's way of doing things. Among real workmen, they were doing real work, in a real way.

The Practical Arts School trains young men teachers. It instructs journeymen and high school graduates so that they can make school life more like real life for those two critical years when boys waver between dropping school as soon as the law permits or continuing in the high school. To give the young men opportunity to observe and to teach practical work, one hundred and fifty boys and the same number of girls are taken. The girls' work is distinct from the boys'.

Four years ago, the Practical Arts School opened for Fitchburg boys and girls who, having finished their sixth grade, preferred to enter it rather than to continue in the corresponding seventh and eighth grades of the city schools. Double the anticipated number of pupils were enrolled.

From the first the school has offered a choice of four courses: the literary, the commercial, the household arts for girls, and the practical arts course for boys. Every course covers the work essential for entrance to the city high school and gives ten additional hours to work appropriate to the course. Because of this extra work the school day is six hours long.

My story is only of the boys in the practical arts course.

Business men visit the school to see the youngsters on the job. "We have heard strange reports of boys engaged in real work in the upper grammar grades. We want to be shown," is their challenge.

"I suppose you will tell us next," said the representative of a Canadian board of trade, "that boys are going to paint your side walls and ceilings, as we saw painters doing as we entered the building."

Later, the "painters" (a year under high school age) were told that another visitor had mistaken them for working men. Everybody laughed. It has become a common joke. The taller boys have often been mistaken for men at work inside and outside the building. In paintcovered overalls, jumpers, and caps,