clubs, and later to join these clubs into state federations of clubs,
and finally the state federations into a national body, they did not
dream that they were going to express a collective opinion. Indeed, at
that time not very many had opinions worth expressing. The immediate
need of women's souls at the beginning of the club movement was for
education; the higher education they missed by not going to college, and
they formed their clubs with the sole object of self-culture.

The study period did not last very long. In fact it was doomed from the
beginning, for it is not in the nature of women, or at least it is not
in the habit of women, to do things for themselves alone. They have
_served_ for so many generations that they have learned to like serving
better than anything else in the world, and they add service to the
pursuit of culture, just as some of them add the important postscript to
the unimportant letter.

Thus Dallas, Texas, had a women's club of the culture caste. One spring
day, after the star member had read a paper on the "Lake Poets," and
another member had rendered a Chopin _étude_ on the piano, they began to
talk about the stegomyia mosquito, and what a pity it was that the
annual danger of contagion and death from the bite of that insect had to
be faced all over again. Pools of water all over town, simply swarming
with little wriggling things, soon to emerge as full-armed stegomyias,
merely because the city authorities hadn't the money, or said they
hadn't, to cover the pools with oil.

"Why, oil isn't very expensive," said one of the club women. "Let's buy
a whole lot of it and do the work ourselves."

So the work of saving hundreds of lives every year was added to the