Page 39 - 1913 November - To Dragma

44 TO DRAG MA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

"Freshmen don't change much, do they, Harris," it said; "those
two idiots are getting fun out of the same moth-eaten jokes we
laughed over. It's pretty good to hear the chaff again, tho' I can't
believe it's almost six years since I went west. It's a great country
but Boston isn't far behind. Harris, did Hums tell the truth, are
you making leprosy your special branch?"

"Yes, I am," responded the man addressed as Harris.

Cimbria at once became interested, the voice was so mellow in tone,
and so sympathetic.

"It's time some of us waked up to the gravity of the situation,
for the number of cases in this country increases each year, but they
have been confined to California, as a rule, and we New Knglanders
haven't paid much attention to it. During the past year, since this
damned fashion of wearing false hair became the rage, we have had
more than our share, right here in Boston. Joe, I sometimes think
women are all fools. This talk about their dainty feminine ways
has about as much foundation as the fairy tales we heard in our
childhood. I suppose half the women in this house would be insulted
if asked to use an unwashed knife and fork, or to sleep between sheets
not fresh from the laundry, yet consider what they put on their
heads. This mad craze for big hats demands the present style
of hair-dressing. Most of the raw material for the rats, etc., comes
from China where it's taken from the dead bodies of convicts, lepers
and outcasts. It has to come from this class for no respectable
Chinaman would sell his queue during his life time, and his relatives
would be afraid to after his death. When it reaches America the
importers give it to families in the slums to be cured for the shops.
You can fancy the kind of people who would do such work and the
places in which it is done. It's been no surprise to me that we have
had six or seven cases here in the city of girls who have worked in
hair-stores and caught the disease. As far as we know now, it's
quite incurable. You know as well as I do, what that means."

The speaker's voice grew low and earnest.

" I n our profession we grow used to almost everything but I tell
you, Joe, it makes my heart bleed to think of those girls, ignorant,
light-hearted, and wholly unfitted to meet tragic things, being up
against such a fate, and all because the fashionable woman wants
to carry round a head the size of a barrel!"

"But isn't emigration at the bottom of it, Harris?" asked his
friend. "Europe is flooding us each year with all kinds of people
from all kinds of places. Politically they bring us anarchy, com-
mercially they cause low wages, and physically they give us diseases