The summer doctors employed by the Health
Department to canvass the tenements in July and August will gladly
cooperate. Let us have the flowers."
If I could have foreseen the result, I hardly think that last
paragraph would have been printed. I meant to give people a chance
to discover for themselves how much pleasure they could get out of
a little thing like taking an armful of flowers to town, but they
voted unanimously, so it seemed, to let me have it all. Flowers came
pouring in from every corner of the compass. They came in boxes,
in barrels, and in bunches, from field and garden, from town and
country. Express-wagons carrying flowers jammed Mulberry Street,
and the police came out to marvel at the row. The office was fairly
smothered in fragrance. A howling mob of children besieged it. The
reporters forgot their rivalries and lent a hand with enthusiasm
in giving out the flowers. The Superintendent of Police detailed
five stout patrolmen to help carry the abundance to points of
convenient distribution. Wherever we went, fretful babies stopped
crying and smiled as the messengers of love were laid against their
wan cheeks.
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