True, ten-cent donations were not suggested to adult contributors, and the Mosquito Man did much to induce the well-to-do citizens to subscribe according to their means.  He still tells with relish of the club of women which took up a collection, after his talk, and presented him with two dollars, in small change.

“The women, though, were my greatest help,” he adds; “I found that the women are as a rule better citizens than the men and are glad to be organized to fight the mosquito and fly menace.  Of course, I found some uneducated ones that owned a piece of property a foot square, and were afraid that I would walk off with it in my pocket if I came to look it over—­but, as for the educated women, I could not have managed my campaign without them.”

A large contributor to the fund was the monastery at Kaiser Island.  For years this had been a summer resort for the monks, who filled the dormitories in the old days before the mosquitoes took the island.  Only one priest was there when the Mosquito Man visited the place to ask for a subscription.

“Very few come any more,” said the priest.  “It is because of the mosquitoes.”

“Will you contribute $500 to get rid of them?” asked the Mosquito Man.

Briefly, the Mosquito Man offered to repay the $500 himself if he did not exterminate the mosquitoes.  The mosquitoes went; the monks came back to Kaiser Island.

Yet, in spite of the occasional generous giver, the $7,500 was never quite raised, and the Mosquito Man himself had to make up the deficit.  The citizens of Norwalk, for instance, contributed only $150.

This all happened three years ago, and now not a child in the twelve miles but can tell you all about mosquitoes and how a community can avoid having them.  The Mosquito Man is appreciated now, and the community understands what he has done for them and what he is still doing—­for the contract merely drained the salt marshes, doing away with the salt-water mosquitoes.  There were still the fresh-water mosquitoes, and there was still much work for some one to do.  That some one has been the Mosquito Man.

During the three years, he has made it his business to drain every inland marsh within his territory, to turn over every tub which may collect water, to let the plug out of every old boat which is breeding mosquitoes, and to convince every ancestor-encumbered autocrat that his inherited woods can breed mosquitoes just as disastrously as do the tin cans of the Hungarian immigrant down the road.  The Mosquito Man has an assistant, paid by the towns of Darien and Norwalk—­and together they traverse the country.

“It was difficult finding a man who would go into mud to the waist when need was,” said the Mosquito Man, “but I finally found a good man with the proper scorn of public opinion on the clothes question, and with a properly trained wife who cleaned without scolding.”