THE STUDENTS JOURNAL.
13
and with a skillful jab stuck it on the outside casing of the door.
There were pretty girls and homely girls; girls with red hair, and girls with black; short, tall, slender, stout—every kind of girl seemed to be there and they all chewed gum. The jaws of some of them kept up their usual motion even though the gum was outside the door.
Doctor Henderson asked them a few questions. In every case he had to repeat his question in a louder tone of voice.
Finally he said he had asked all the questions he cared to and the girls were dismissed. They filed out in the same order of their entrance, and taking the gum next in line along the casing.Each girl obtained her own.
"Well," said Miss Smith, accompanying him to the door, "What do you think? Can you make those girls give attention to the bells?"
"I am not quite sure," said he, "but I can try. Of one thing I am sure. What they need is not tonics but ear-trumpets." As he spoke a little pink paper fluttered down the stairs and lodged at his feet. Mechanically he picked it up and glanced at it. It bore the words "Tutti Frutti." A light broke over his face.
"Do your girls chew much gum?" he asked. "Yes they do," said Miss Mehitable. "Let
me show you," and she stepped back into the room and brought a package of little papers. They bore different labels.—"Califormia Fruit," "Pepsin," "Yucatan," "Tutti Frutti."
"I find them everywhere," she said, "on the stairs, in the halls, blown about the grounds. I am at my wit's end to know what to do to put a stop to it."
Arrrived home, Doctor John went straight to a medical journal. Yes, there it was just as he had thought. "The constant motion of the jaws affects the muscles of the ear and reacting upon the auditory nerve produces a feeling of weariness, and, in time a partial paralysis of the nerve and an inability to hear plainly."
He sat down and wrote a note to Miss Smith quoting the passage just read and giving his authority. He closed by saying, "I can think of but one thing that can save your girls from becoming deaf. It is to stop chewing gum. If they will not stop, the only thing for you to do is to waken them by electricity."
Miss Smith's girls gave up the practice of chewing gum.
Doctor John Henderson afterward devoted himself to the study of diseases of the ear and became a remarkably successful aurist.
May Hotchkiss Spencer.
Acrostic.
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