Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/206

 "Then there's another—this is a minor thing; it doesn't try to drive home general abstract principles, but it'd surprise you the effect it's had on careless housewives, who of course don't mean to neglect the health of their little ones and merely need instruction and a little pep put into them, and when they see a card like this, it makes 'em think:

"I've gotten quite a lot of appreciation in my small way for some of these things that didn't hardly take me five minutes to dash off. Some day when you get time, glance over this volume of clippings—just to show you, Doctor, what you can do if you go at the Movement in the up-to-date and scientific manner. This one, about the temperance meeting I addressed in Des Moines—say, I had that hall, and it was jam-pack-full, lifting right up on their feet when I proved by statistics that ninety-three per cent. of all insanity is caused by booze! Then this—well, it hasn't anything to do with health, directly, but it'll just indicate the opportunity you'll have here to get in touch with all the movements for civic weal."

He held out a newspaper clipping in which, above a pen-and-ink caricature portraying him with large mustached head on a tiny body, was the headline:

Pickerbaugh looked it over, reflecting, "That was a dandy meeting! We increased church attendance here seventeen per cent.! Oh, Doctor, you went to Winnemac and had your internship in Zenith, didn't you? Well, this might interest you then. It's from the Zenith Advocate-Times, and it's by Chum Frink, who, I think you'll agree with me, ranks with Eddie Guest and Walt Mason as the greatest, as they certainly are the most popular, of all our poets, showing that you can bank every time on the literary taste of the American Public. Dear old Chum! That was when I was in Zenith to address the national convention of Congregational Sunday-schools, I happen to be a Congregationalist myself, on 'The Morality of A 1 Health.' So Chum wrote this poem about me:"