Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/577

Rh of death. The havoc of the plague had been more rapid; but the plague had visited our shores only once or twice within living memory, and the smallpox was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maid objects of horror to the lover."

At last our English brethren have learned the lesson and learned it well. They have had bitter experience of the devastation which smallpox is capable of working among their kindred, whether in the hovel or in the palace. They have mourned the loss of a gracious sovereign smitten with the pestilence on the very throne of their kingdom. While we may not wish to follow them in all matters, they have set us a worthy example in the patience with which they have buttressed their bulwarks of immunity. The germs of this pestilence are powerless against the army of their humble villagers and peasantry, ranks upon ranks of whom bear upon the arms of each no fewer than four, and often as many as six and eight, simultaneously produced scars of successful inoculation of cow-pox. Vaccination should be the seal on the passport of entrance to the public schools, to the voters' booth, to the box of the juryman, and to every position of duty, privilege, profit or honor in the gift of either the State or the Nation.