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The population of the Colony varies. People come and go -- and those who go often come back again. Optimism and normality and enjoyment of country living and outdoor exercise consistently prevail. Many come long distances. There's a brown-eyed girl from Seattle and a youth with broad shoulders from Vancouver. California and Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kansas -- state after state is represented. A woman has registered from the province of New Brunswick. Two very small people win a smile from everyone who looks their way -- a little boy of three or so with his pretty nurse in her uniform and white cap, a brown-haired young lady not yet four whose mother has come with her. There is a youngster of eight with a brace on one leg who does a hop, skip and a jump every once in a while, telling the world he is getting better. A large delegation between ten and fifteen are just plain boy, roguish and sizzling with energy.

Polio does not come to childhood alone. There is a record of a man of seventy being made helpless by its devastating scourge. Men and women in the fifties are victims of the disease and often much more severely disabled than young folk. No part of the country is exempt from invasion. Foreign countries suffer in the same way. One of the members of the Colony is a physician, a specialist in children's diseases, who became ill in Rome and came back to the United States unable to walk. Another of the patients who is taking treatment this summer had Infantile Paralysis in Paris.

The Inn and cottages and pools are a stairless Eden for the residents. One of the things a person deprived of the customary use of his limbs comes to realize is how full of stairs the world is. Steps up and steps down, so many beautiful stone stairways without a sign of a hand railing to give friendly aid. Going up stairs normally means putting all the weight of the body on one foot when a step up or step down is taken. Even people with perfectly good legs are prone to puff a bit before the top is reached and it is generally known that stair climbing puts a strain on the heart. Yet stairs everywhere prevail.

"Architects make things hard when they design public buildings, theoretically for the use of all the people," a woman at Warm Springs declared. "Look at the postoffices, courthouses, railroad stations, churches and the Federal edifices in Washington! All of them with smooth slippery staircases up to their doors. The approach to the library of Columbia University in New York City is a solid mass of railless steps. To save me I can't get into the New York Postoffice on Eighth Avenue -- neither can the great majority of Polio cases in Manhattan. Beauty of design in entrances seems to sacrifice ease of access."

At Warm Springs everything is on the level. Ramps give convenience to the hotel, not a step or a threshold may be seen in any of the cottages.

"I live in one of those towns built on a hillside where everybody has terraces," one of the Warm Springs family who walks on crutches told me, "almost everyone I know lives in a house with two or three flights of steps up to the front door. Not a hand railing in sight. Getting about here is so easy I dread going home."

Most people who have had Polio find it difficult to indulge in play at beaches and mountain resorts. Walking in sand is out of the question. Mountain pathways are likely to be slippery with pine needles and uneven with tree roots. Wheeled chairs can't be wheeled. Braces and crutches are inadequate for getting about. If it offered nothing else, life at Warm Springs would give a victim of Polio a healthful holiday -- under the most favorable conditions.

As the work has gone on each year, the special needs of the residents have been met in many ways. In any group of people living together for a given time, illness is likely to occur and a modern infirmary has been built where hospital care is immediately available. A physician who is a general practitioner visits the Colony three times a week. There is a library full of worn books, a recreational building where movies, church services and class work have a roof to shelter them. Many children are of school age -- a teacher gives them regular instruction. Craft work is popular. On the main floor of the hotel is a gift shop as versatile as an old-fashioned country store, where wheel-chair shopping is constantly going on. There is traffic in magazines, camera supplies, tooth paste, talcum powder, bathing caps, post cards, stamps and what not.

At times boarding school life is suggested. When tables are put together for a farewell party for some lad leaving for home the next day. Tin horns and clownish caps. Hilarity. Ice cream. Or when a bus load goes on a picnic and takes a watermelon along.

All the patients share the comfort and sociability of the hotel lounge. Beneath the old beamed ceilings every night after dinner there is a group about the piano and crooners rival the voices which may be heard over the radio from far away broadcasting stations. A pool table is surrounded by partisans of the game. Bridge and chess playing become popular before the blazing logs which are kindled in the great fire places when evenings grow chilly.