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with yellow fever is the presence therein of mosquitoes that have bitten cases of yellow fever."

It was so simple. It was true. That was all. That was that. And Walter Reed wrote to his wife:

"The prayer that has been mine for twenty years, that I might be permitted in some way or at some time to do something to alleviate human suffering has been granted! A thousand Happy New Years. . . . Hark, there go the twenty-four buglers in concert, all sounding taps for the old year!"

They were sounding taps, were those buglers, for the searcher that was Jesse Lazear, and for the scourge of yellow fever that could now be wiped from the earth. They were blowing their bugles, those musicians, to celebrate—as you will see—the fate that waited for that little commission after a too short hour of triumph. . . .

Then the world came to Habana, and there was acclaim for Walter Reed, and the customary solemn discussions and doubts and arguments of the learned men who came. William Crawford Gorgas (who was another blameless man!) grooming himself for the immortality of Panama, went into the gutters and cesspools and cisterns of Habana, making horrid war on the Stegomyia mosquitoes, and in ninety days, Habana had not a single case of yellow jack—she was free for the first time in two hundred years. It was magical! But still there came learned doctors, and solemn bearded physicians, from Europe and America, asking this, questioning that—and one morning fifteen of these skeptics were in the mosquito room of the laboratory—oh! they were from Missouri! "These are remarkable experiments, but the results should be weighed and considered with reserve . . . et cetera!" Then the gauze lid came off a jar of she-mosquitoes (of course it was by accident) and into the room, with wicked lustful eyes on those learned scientists the Stegomyia buzzed. Alas for skepticism! Away