The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-11-13
MORE mrcRonlc HANGERS.

A'A0AhS NAAANtoDAO OANWEEASs
 This, let 1t be borne in mind, is the microbe age. This old world of ours hes had many specific "ages" recorded in history. but if this isn't the age of microbes we miss 1t. There are mi crobes to right of us. microbes to left of us," as the poet would say, and if
 we cannot add that they "volleyed and thundered," 1t may be asserted that they do much worse things. They in- feet our food and our drink, our clothes and our money and about everything else, animate or inanimate. belonging to our existence on earth. Speaking of microbes, their habits and abiding places. we note that The New York Medical Journal is laying up trouble for itself Referring to the woman's fashionable hat, it says:
 The woman who wears 1t bears about heisht of . little more than i've feet above the pavement, a very promising altitude at which to gather in microbes.
 4hC HVGthGES AEG 6Q I0duy LGUIACle9 Tor
 use in the chase. When she gesticu-
 iates with her head she distributes her
 eaten upon the just and the unjust
 Impartialy, in church, fin the theatre
 ana elsewhere. On her return .Sko her home she Is very apt to wave the plum
 age over her sleeping child only to
 wonder, a few days later, from whom
 little Johnnie got the scarlet fever.
 We don't know what the women of the country will say to such general. as well as specific indictment against their head-gear as that. but they'll not quit wearing hats-not just vet. at q! events. Perhaps. as iTih1e Chicago Journal observes. the day will yet come when everybody will breathe, eat and bathe in antiseptics, and women will no more wear hats than they would feed their babies on arsenic pudding. but at present there is no expectation that a hygienic attack on millinery styles vii have. any effect whatever. The average woman is so constituted that if it came to a choice between the latest style of hat and perfect health she would chose the microbe ana let nature take its course"
 Just so. But while the women persist in wearing such hats as they choose and can procure. paying no attention to the microbe theory. there will be some timorous souls who will take on B new assortment of shivers when they read what this medical auth ority has to say. They will be ready to dodge when they see a woman and her hat coming their way. and if one of them sh ould chance to be obtrusive or impertlnent the woman will only need to wave her hat to send him chasing himself around the corner. Then she'll don that hat with the proud consciousness of duty well performed and will tell The Med Ical Journal to so on and preach about else.
 And yet. if we should take The Jour
 al as authority 1t brings us face to face with a whole lot of disquieting possibilities. To think of woman go- ing about with a drag-net for microbes on her head, gathering the pestiferous little cattle from all sources and all is bad enough. but when to that Is added the information that she goes about distributing them promiscu- ousIy it is inclined to be disturbing to those who believe 1t. The generality of mankind will go on seeing nothing hurtful about the hats except the price. and will refuse to run or dodge when they sec one coming towards them, es- pecially if it adorns the head of pretty woman. It is the age of microbes, but they can't scare us with any such ghost stories as that one.