The Child's Day

There is one great evil that for hundreds and hundreds of years has been known wherever people are crowded together, and even in the open country, too; and which has been the cause of more untidiness and uncleanliness and unhappiness and disease than any other evil ever known. And that is the drinking of alcohol. People don’t drink clear alcohol, but they can get a great deal of it—enough to poison them badly—in the fermented drinks you learned about some time ago.

In the days when your grandfather was a little boy, every man thought that ale and wine and whiskey were good foods for him when he was well; and good medicine when he was sick. He believed that they gave him an appetite, and increased his strength. But now we have found, by carefully studying the effects of alcohol, in laboratories and in hospitals, that these beliefs were almost entirely mistaken. We know that all that wine, beer, and whiskey do is to make people feel better for a little while, without making them actually stronger or better in any way. In fact, in most respects these drinks make them weaker and worse instead.

Perhaps you will ask, “How do whiskey and wine and beer do us harm?” And here is only part of the answer: (1) They tire the heart and, by enlarging the blood pipes in the skin, make the heart pump too much of the blood out to the skin. In this way they make a person feel warmer when he really is not any warmer. (2) They make the liver work too hard. (3) They dull the brain, so that it cannot think so clearly or so well. (4) If one drinks them frequently, it is harder for him to get well when he is sick; more people die out of those who drink alcohol than out of those who do not.

Alcohol is a narcotic; that is, it deadens our nerves, for the time being, to any sensations of pain or discomfort, much in the same way that a very small dose of morphine or opium would. We may imagine it does us good because, for a little while after drinking it, we may cease to feel pain or fatigue or cold; but, instead of making us really better and able to do more work, it is dulling our nerves so that we work more slowly and more clumsily. Men who have carefully measured the amount of work that they do have found that they do less work on days when they take one or two glasses of beer or wine than they do on days when they drink only water.

The great insurance companies have found that those of their policy holders who drink no alcohol at all live nearly one fourth longer and have nearly one third fewer sicknesses than those who drink alcohol even in moderate amounts.

Indeed, so strong is the evidence as to the bad effects of alcohol, and so steadily is it increasing, that it will probably not be very many years more before the drinking of wine or beer by intelligent, thoughtful people will have become less than half as common as it is now.

Strong, healthy men may be able for a long time to drink small amounts of liquor without noticing any harmful effects; but all the time the alcohol may be doing serious harm to their nerves and brain and kidneys and liver and blood vessels, which they will not find out until it is too late to stop the trouble.

Useless and bad as alcohol is for full-grown men and women, it is even worse for young and growing children; and no child, and no boy or girl under the age of twenty-one, should ever touch a drop of it, except in those rare instances where it may be prescribed as a medicine by a doctor, just as many other drugs are, which in larger doses would be poisons.

Fortunately, it will be no trouble for you children to let it alone entirely; for not one of you would like the taste of it the first time—or, indeed, for the matter of that, for the first ten or twelve times—that you tried to drink it, if you should be so foolish. This is one striking difference between alcohol and all other foods and drinks. Children have absolutely no natural liking, or taste, for the drinks that contain it, as they have for meat, milk, sugar, apples, and the other real foods. This is Nature’s way of telling them that it is not a real food, and not needed in any way for their growth and health. Let it alone absolutely, until you are at least twenty-one years old; and by that time you will probably have become so convinced of the harm that it is doing that you will never begin using it at all.

What we have been saying so far applies, of course, only to the moderate use of alcohol. How terrible the effects of the long or excessive use of alcohol are, you don’t need to learn from a book. All you have to do is to keep your eyes open on the streets, and see the drunken men reeling along the sidewalk, and the wrecks of men that hang around the saloons. The poorhouses and the jails and the insane asylums are filled with them. The most terrible thing that can happen to anyone is to become a drunkard. The best and safest and only sensible thing to do is to keep away from the only stuff that makes drunkards. It may do you the most terrible harm, and it cannot do you the slightest good.

Your city can never become the “City Beautiful” so long as this evil mars it; and, as you grow up, I hope you will do all you can toward making the right kind of city and home.

THE EVENING MEAL

When you have had some good games of play after school, and have finished whatever errands you may have to run, or have done the chores about the barn or the garden or the house, you will begin to feel as if there were something missing somewhere. It won’t take you very long to discover where that missing feeling is; and when you hear a call from the house, or a ring of the bell in the hall, you come running in for supper. If you have worked well in school and played hard and done your chores well, you will have a splendid appetite. In fact, you will think there is no other meal in the day that tastes quite so good.

Is your evening meal supper or dinner? If you have had a hot dinner at noon, you probably do not want anything more than a good supper. But if you had only luncheon, then you are ready to eat something hot and hearty about six o’clock.

What are some of the things that you like for dinner? Meat and eggs and bread and butter and jam and rice and potatoes and onions and celery and cookies and apples and oranges and oh, so many, many other things! Mother Nature has given us all these good things, that we may have not only enough to eat but plenty of different kinds. We soon grow tired of one kind, and that is how she tells us that we need many kinds.

When I was little, oranges were not so common as they are now; and I never but once had as many as I wanted. That once, my father told me to eat all I liked, and I did; but for weeks afterwards I didn’t want even to see an orange! Did you ever feel that way too, though perhaps not about oranges? Nature sometimes has to teach us not to eat too much of one kind at a time.

Some people like one thing, and some another. Do all of you like onions? I think not; but those who do, like them very much. The same thing is true of tomatoes and sweet potatoes and red raspberries and oysters and many other things. But there are some things that almost everybody likes; and our grandfathers and great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers ate them. One of them is called the “staff of life” because we lean, or depend, on it so much; we have it for breakfast, dinner, and supper. That is bread, of course. Meat and eggs and milk and butter, too, are among the foods that we all like.

These might be called our “main foods,” and we should eat one or two or even three of them at each meal. Meat and milk and eggs and butter, animals give us. But these are not enough; we need besides some of the foods that plants give us, because, as I have told you, we need different kinds of food at one time to keep the body fires going briskly.

What are some of the foods that plants give us? Bread is made from a plant—from wheat. Oatmeal comes from the oat plant; and hominy, from corn. Some of our plant foods, such as potatoes, turnips, onions, sweet potatoes, parsnips, and radishes, grow under ground. Some, such as peas and beans, grow on vines. Then there are lettuce and cabbage and celery. And there are fruits—cherries, apples, peaches, plums, pears, melons, tomatoes, berries.

Nature has given us all these foods, and many more; and she wants us to use them all. She wants us to use, every day and every meal, some foods that come from plants and some that come from animals.

A good dinner would be a slice of roast beef or mutton, a potato, a helping of some sort of vegetable like peas or beans or onions or tomatoes or celery; and a dish of milk pudding or apple dumpling, or stewed fruit with bread and butter, or pie that has only an upper crust or its under crust very well baked. When you are eating bread, remember that the crusts are the very best part, because they are well cooked and really taste the best. They are good for your teeth, too.

Perhaps, while I am talking about a good meal, I ought to talk a little about the way to eat and how to make mealtime pleasant.

Of course, to make our food soft, we must take little bites, eat slowly, and chew each mouthful a long time. Be sure to remember this. So many of the children I know eat so fast that you’d think they had to catch a train! Did you ever see anyone try to talk and chew at the same time or forget to shut his mouth while he was chewing? Wasn’t it a very awkward, disagreeable sight? Think a moment, if you are tempted to talk with your mouth full, or put your knife into your mouth, or make a noise while you are eating, that these things are not pleasant for your neighbors.

Do you tell funny stories at the table and talk about happy tramps you have taken or games you have played, or about your pets or your books? If you do, your food will do you more good, and you will be helping the other people at the table, too. Mealtimes should be the happiest times in the day.

A PLEASANT EVENING

When the supper things have been cleared away, you have two hours or so before going to bed, and I dare say you look forward to these as one of the pleasantest parts of the day.

It is always best for you to take things rather easily and quietly and pleasantly for at least fifteen or twenty minutes after every meal; and after the heaviest meal of the day, whether this comes at noon or in the evening, it is better to stretch the time to half or three quarters of an hour. If you try to work or play hard right after a hearty meal, you will be drawing away to your brain or to your muscles, the blood that the stomach is trying to get for the digesting and melting of your food. I suppose that you have all found this out for yourselves; for, if you run and play too hard right after dinner, you are very soon out of breath, and if you keep up the exercise, you are quite likely to have an attack of indigestion or stomach ache. If you sit down to study directly after a meal, you soon feel heavy and lazy, and what you read doesn’t seem clear to you, and in a little while you probably have a headache and an unpleasant taste in your mouth. If you try to do two important things like digestion and hard work with your brain or the muscles of your arms and legs at the same time, you will be very likely to do both of them badly.

Even if you have studying to do at night, it will be much better for you to spend half an hour or an hour in laughing and chatting, or in reading some good story, or in playing some of the many pleasant parlor games that rest you instead of tiring you, before you settle down to your books. You will find that when you do start to work, you get your lessons much more quickly and easily than if you had started in after eating.

Perhaps your sister is just waiting to show you that girls can play checkers better than boys can—“So there!” Or some of your friends have come in for a game of dominoes or authors or snap or parcheesi or stage coach or pussy-wants-a-corner, or to try that new song you learned last week; and you will be surprised how quickly the time flies away and bedtime or study hour comes.

Most evenings, however, you will probably get out your favorite magazine, or that good story that you are reading, and you will all sit around the big lamp on the center table and go off on adventures to the uttermost parts of the earth, with the best and most lasting friends that you will ever make—friends who will never grow tired of you and will always come when you want them and are always willing to talk or play—the people that live in books. Be sure to pick out the best of them for your chums—the bravest and the kindest and the most courteous, and the cleanest and the most honorable. You have the whole world to choose from; and it is never worth your while to get acquainted with cheap, badly behaved, second-rate people when you can have your pick of the best. Your mother and your father and your teacher will help you to choose, and you will soon find that what they call “good literature” is good stories, and about the right sort of men and women and boys and girls—the kind that you would like to know, and that you would want to be like. Once try it, and you find that you like that kind of reading better than you do the cheap, slangy, trashy stuff, just as you like, and never get tired of, good bread and butter and roast beef and apples and milk and cream and pudding and pie. Good sound stories of home life and adventure and travel are just as important in making your minds wholesome and happy as these good foods are in keeping your bodies strong and healthy.

Be sure that the paper of the books and magazines you read is white and not glossy, and is fairly thick and firm; for this makes them much easier to read and strains your eyes less. See, too, that the type is large and clear; for small, close type and yellow or shiny paper are very hard on the eyes.

Be sure, of course, when you sit down to read not to sit with your face to the lamp and your head bending forward; but settle yourself in a comfortable chair with your back to the light, and hold your book so that you can keep your chin up and your head erect while you read. You can breathe better, and read better, and enjoy what you read better in this position than in any other.

Even if you have sums or writing to do, it is better to sit with your back, or at least your left side, toward the light; and often you will find it a great help to sit down with your back to the light in a large easy chair and do your writing on a big, thin book, or light piece of board, on a cushion on your knee.

In winter, you will find that for the first half hour or so that you are reading after supper, you will want to keep fairly near the fire, because the blood is being drawn in from your skin to your stomach for purposes of digestion; but be sure to see that at least one, and better two, windows in the room are open six inches or so at the top, so that there is plenty of fresh air pouring into the room.

When study hour comes, take up your books and go briskly to work, forgetting that there is anything else in the world, and you will be astonished how quickly you will learn your lessons. Besides, you will be learning one of the most valuable lessons in life—to do with your might whatever your hands, or minds, find to do.

GOOD NIGHT

I. GETTING READY FOR BED

By and by the clock strikes eight or nine, and your mother says, “Children, time to go to bed!”

Sometimes you will have just come to the interesting point in the story, and would give anything to go on and finish it. But often you will be just nodding over your book, or beginning to wonder why the story is not quite so interesting as it was, or why the lines seem to be running into one another, and the book inclined to swing up and bump your nose.

If you have had a lively, busy, happy day, you are quite sleepy enough to be ready for bed—that is, if you could drop into it with all your clothes on, without all the bother and fuss of undressing. So you pull yourself together bravely and answer, “All right, mother,” and say “Good night” to everybody, and upstairs you go.

Of course, you must take off your clothes, because you would find them most uncomfortable to sleep in. Besides, the little pores all over your skin have been pouring out perspiration all day long; and a great deal of this has been caught by your clothes, just as it is caught by the bedclothes while you sleep.

So it is a good thing to take off your clothes, and let your skin be well aired and cooled. Don’t leave your clothes all in a heap on the floor just where you happen to shed them, but hang them up over the back of a chair or on pegs, so that the air can blow through them all night long and sweeten and clean and dry them. Clothes that are worn continuously become sour with perspiration, and for this same reason your mother gives you regularly, once or twice a week, clean underwear and clean shirts or dresses.

After you have undressed for bed, wash your face and neck and hands; and if you have a nice warm room or bathroom, take a quick splash, or sponge bath, all over, before you put on your nightgown. This will wash away from your skin everything that the perspiration has been leaving on it all day long, as well as any dust, or dirt, that may have got on it during the day.

If the room is not warm enough for you to do this, it is a good thing for you to strip to your waist and then to swing your arms about, much as you did in the morning, only not quite so long, and to rub your arms and neck and shoulders all over with your hands. This gives them an air bath, and rubs off any of the little scales of skin that may be ready to be shed, and gives you a sort of dry wash, which is next best to a wet one.

Then, when you have put on your nightdress, give your hair a thorough brushing. This is the best time of the day to do it. Dust, smoke, soot, and germs have been blowing into your hair all day long, and a thoroughly good brushing will not only get these out of it before they have had time to work their way in and lodge on the scalp, but will keep the hair bright and healthy.

Before you get into bed, give your nails a quick scrub with a nail brush and hot water and soap, and go over them with a blunt-pointed nail cleaner, cleaning out any dirt that may be under their edges, and rounding off any ragged or broken points with the file. Once a week or so, when you take your hot bath, it is a good thing to go over your toe nails in the same way, trimming them and cleaning them. Remember, however, not to round off your toe nails at the corners, but to leave them square, as in this way you will prevent them from ingrowing under the pressure of your shoes.

There is one thing that you should be very sure of before you get into bed, and that is that your teeth are as clean as it is possible for you to make them. If you attended to this also directly after supper, so much the better; for just as it is important to clean the dishes and knives and forks that you have been using, so it is important to thoroughly clean the ivory knives and forks that grow in your mouth. Talk about being “born with a silver spoon in your mouth”! You were born with something much prettier and far more valuable.

Even though your teeth make a firm and even line in front and on their cutting edges, yet there are many little gaps and spaces between their roots, where bits of food can stick. If these scraps of food are not thoroughly and carefully removed after each meal, the warmth and moisture in the mouth makes them begin to decay. The acids from this decay will be likely not only to upset your stomach and digestion, but to act upon the glassy coating of your teeth. After a little while, spots will begin to form on the surface of your teeth; they will lose their bright, shiny, pearly look; the acids will eat further into the teeth, and very soon there will be holes, or cavities.

Though your teeth are very hard and glassy looking on the surface, they are much softer and chalkier inside; this glassy coating covers only the crown, or free part, of the tooth, which you can see. It leaves the softer inside part of the tooth bare just at the edge of the gums, and particularly between the roots of the teeth, where little scraps of food lodge and decay. When the acids that are formed by the decaying food have eaten away a good deal of the inside of the tooth, the hard, shiny surface is left just like a thin shell; and one day you happen to bite down upon a piece of bone in your food, or try to crack a nut with your teeth, and “crack” goes this brittle shell of your hollow tooth.

Right in the middle of each tooth is a tiny hollow, or cavity, filled with a soft, living pulp containing one or two very sensitive nerves; and when the decay has eaten into the tooth far enough to reach this nerve pulp, it makes it ache, and then you have toothache.

The one and only thing that is necessary in order to avoid all this decay and breaking away of your teeth, and throbbing toothache, is to keep the surface of your teeth, and particularly the sides where they are next one another, clean and smooth and unbroken. And all that is needed to keep your teeth perfectly clean and smooth is to use your toothbrush thoroughly after every meal and at bedtime; and then, if there are any little scraps of food between the teeth that have not been brushed away, to pick them out gently with a quill toothpick, or take a piece of silk or linen thread, push it up between the teeth, and gently saw backward and forward until you have cleaned out the space between the roots. You should take at least three to five minutes after every meal and before you go to bed at night to brush your teeth; and you should brush not only your teeth, but the whole surface of your gums close up to where they join the lips.

It is almost as important to keep your gums pink and hard and healthy as it is to keep your teeth clean; and the same thorough brushing will do both. If the gums are perfectly healthy, they will come well down over the roots of the teeth, and keep them safely covered right down to where the glassy outer coating begins, and so leave no gap where the acids of decay can attack the teeth. Be sure to brush your teeth, not merely straight backward and forward, but up and down and round and round as well, both to clean out thoroughly all the grooves and openings between them and to brush the gums well down over the teeth.

It may seem strange, but one of the best ways to keep your teeth from growing crooked and irregular is to keep your nose clear and healthy, so that you can breathe through it freely at all times, both day and night. Crooked jaws and irregular teeth are more often caused by mouth breathing than by any other one thing.

You can see why it is best to be careful not to get grit or dirt or bits of bone in your food, and not to crack nuts or hard candy with your teeth. If you do, you may crack or scratch the delicate glassy coating of your teeth. But, on the other hand, it is a good thing to give the teeth plenty to do, and particularly to eat the crusts of bread, and some of the tougher parts of meat, and parched corn or other grains, and to eat celery, apples, and other foods that take a great deal of chewing. The teeth are like everything else in the body—they need plenty of vigorous work in order to keep them healthy.

Be very careful, though, to keep out of your mouth anything that might possibly crack or scratch the glassy coating, such as pins, pennies, pieces of wire, or slate pencils. It is best not even to try to bite off threads or pieces of string. There is, of course, another reason for not putting pencils and pennies and such things into your mouth: they may have dirt, or germs, on them and infect you with disease or at least upset your digestion.

II. THE LAND OF NOD

Now you are all ready for bed; and the white pillow and the nice, clean sheets and the warm blankets look very good to you, and you are ready to go to the “Land of Nod.”

You need not be afraid of the cold at night. Open your bedroom windows. Have plenty of light-weight, warm covers; then the cold breezes won’t hurt you, but will make you strong. Just think how many hours you are in bed,—nearly half of your life,—and you need fresh, moving air all the time. Be sure to open your windows from the top as well as from the bottom. You know why: your breath is warm so that it floats and rises like smoke; and if you open the window only at the bottom, this bad air, which rises to the top of the room, can’t get out. It is best to have windows on two sides of a bedroom, so that the air can be kept moving through it all night long. If you don’t breathe fresh air while you sleep, you will feel dull and stupid in the morning and perhaps have a headache.

So run your window shades right up to the top and throw your curtains, or shutters, back, as well as open the windows. If you don’t, the fresh air cannot blow through the room properly. Even if this does let more light or noise into the room, this is of no importance whatever compared with abundance of fresh air. If you have played long enough out of doors in the daytime and have eaten a good supper and not stayed up too late, you will sleep soundly without being bothered at all by either lights or noises coming in through the windows. And no matter how cold or how light it is, don’t put your head under the bedclothes. Why?

It is best for you to close your mouth while you are going to sleep, and breathe through your nose, so that the air will be properly purified and warmed before it reaches your lungs. If you can’t do this, your mother can perhaps give you something to wash out your nose, so that you can breathe freely. If that does not help, you had better see a doctor, and he will find some way to clear your head so that you can use your nose comfortably.

Suppose you take a pencil and paper and write down all you did yesterday. Wasn’t it enough to make you tired and sleepy and want a chance to rest? Even while you sleep, your heart keeps beating, and you don’t stop breathing, of course. But your muscles are quiet, and your food tube rests. Your brain rests, too,—better in sleep than at any other time,—so that when morning comes you are as “lively as a cricket” and quite ready for the new day.

Yet even in sleep your brain does not stop working entirely, but goes on receiving messages from the stomach and the skin and the memory, and mixing them up together in the strangest fashion, so that you dream, as you say. You ought not to dream very much if you are perfectly well; but as long as your dreams are pleasant or amusing, you need not pay any attention to them. But if you have had bad dreams, or you dream so hard all night long that you don’t feel rested in the morning, then you had better speak to your mother about it, and let her see what is the matter with your digestion or your nerves, or take you to a doctor. Bad dreams are always a sign of ill health and are a very disagreeable thing, from which there is no need that you should suffer any more than from headache or indigestion or colic. Dreams, of course, do not mean or foretell anything whatever, except simply how bad, or good, the state of your digestion and your nerves is.

Now, how much time should you spend in bed? Well, I think at your age nearly half the time. Ten or eleven hours of sleep make you ready for all the hours of work and play, and you don’t become cross and tired half so easily if you have plenty of sleep. Though you are lying so quietly, you are not by any means wasting your time, for you probably are growing faster when you are asleep than when awake. Babies, who are growing very fast, you know, sleep nearly all the time.

So after you have opened all the windows wide, put out the light and jump into bed and lie down for a good night’s rest without thinking about anything except how comfortable the bed feels when you are tired.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

Good Morning

I. Waking Up.

1. If you were choosing a bedroom, on which side of the house—facing which direction—would you choose it, and why?
2. How does the air “down cellar” feel?
3. Why do people often keep fresh fruit and vegetables there?
4. What are bacteria?
5. How can we prevent bacteria that cause disease from growing in our houses?
6. How would you know, without being told, that sunshine is good for you?
7. What does this book mean by saying that we are made of sunshine?

II. A Good Start.

1. When you jump out of bed in the morning, what do you do with the bedclothes? Why?
2. Stand in front of the class and show them the exercises that are good to do every morning.
3. Tell the class why they are good.
4. Do them every morning for a week, and then tell the class how you feel about keeping them up.

III. Bathing and Brushing.

1. If you grow very warm exercising, what change do you notice in your skin? What makes it turn pink? Where does the moisture come from?
2. What kind of bathing do you like best?
3. What do we wash off besides perspiration and dust?
4. If a scab forms over a scratch or cut in your skin, what should you do to it? Why? When will the scab come off of itself?
5. What makes the skin freckle or tan?
6. Could your face stand the same hard rubbing as your hands? Why not?
7. How do you take care of your hair?
8. What other parts of the skin can you tell about?
9. Look at your nails; which of the “tools” on p. 17 do they need now?
10. How, and when, do you care for your teeth? Why is this brushing very necessary?
11. Why must our clothes be washed every week? Name each of your Five Senses.
12. What can your skin tell you that your eyes and ears cannot?
13. Do you know of any trade or occupation in which it is necessary to train one’s sense of touch? Tell about it.
14. What are the blind children in the picture doing? (Their alphabet does not look like yours, for the letters are represented by groups of raised dots or dashes or curves, which are more easily and quickly felt.)
15. What must you do besides washing and brushing to keep your skin in good order and looking well?

Breakfast

1. Why do we need to eat?
2. Do you like the breakfast suggested here? Why do you need so much?
3. Which of these foods come from animals? Which from plants? Which of them are the best “to grow on”?
4. How much milk is there in the two bottles in the picture on p. 23? What is the difference between milk and cream? Why is it better to buy bottled milk than milk dipped out of a can?
5. Suppose that you are going to get the breakfast in this house; how will you use some of the milk in preparing it? How will you take care of what is left?
6. Why is milk much better for you than coffee or tea? Where does the food strength in the milk come from?
7. Suppose that you have just bitten off a mouthful of food; what is the story of this mouthful before it is taken into your blood? Where does most of it enter the blood? What becomes of the part that the blood cannot use? Why is it very necessary that this be disposed of regularly?

Going to School

I. Getting Ready.

1. How is it best to dress in winter? Why? (If this is hard to understand, think which would cool faster—hot soup in a deep cup or the same soup poured out into a plate? In which dish would the soup have the larger surface from which to let off the heat? You may now weigh only half as much as you will when you are fully grown, but you already have much more than half as much size or surface.)
2. What quality should all clothing material have, and why?

II. An Early Romp.

1. Which makes you more tired, to walk slowly, just “lagging along,” for about twenty minutes, or to walk briskly for the same time? Why?
2. How do you make your muscles strong? What is your heart made of? How can you make your heart strong?
3. Why do you need a heart?
4. What is your pulse? Where can you easily feel a pulse? Count the pulse of someone else for half a minute by a watch. Do this accurately. How many beats would there be in a minute? Try this with different classmates.
5. What do we call the tubes through which the blood flows away from the heart? The tubes through which it flows back to the heart?
6. What is happening to the blood on its “round trip”? Where does it get the liquid food that it delivers to the muscles? Why must the blood be carried away from the muscles?

III. Fresh Air—Why We Need It.

1. If you were asked how we can tell that air is everywhere, what could you say?
2. What do we call a thin light substance like air?
3. What proof have we that the body needs it? How does it get around to the different parts of the body?
4. What is the body—its muscle, bone, skin, and all—made up of? How do these cells use the air? Why do you need to breathe so often?
5. In the candle experiment, is all the air under the glass used up? What is used up? How can we compare a person in a closed room to the burning candle under the glass?
6. What is the gas that we breathe out?
7. In what three ways does the body “clean house”?

IV. Fresh Air—How We Breathe It.

1. Where are your lungs?
2. Draw a picture of the ribs.
3. In what position are they when the lungs are filled with air? In what position is the diaphragm then?
4. What are the lungs giving off in the breath besides carbon dioxid? How can you prove this?
5. How can you prove that the gas in your breath is not like the gas in the fresh air around you?
6. Why does a room with people in it grow very warm if the doors and windows are kept closed?
7. How does Nature keep the outdoor air clean? What makes the winds?
8. Are you careful to keep your breath as clean as possible? How? How do you help keep the air in your house clean?

In School

I. Bringing the Fresh Air In.

1. What do we mean by fresh air? Why must the air we breathe have oxygen in it?
2. Is the air in the room now the best you can have in it? How is the air moving?
3. Is there always the same amount of air in the room? Then, if there is more fresh air, there must be—bad air? If there is less fresh air, there must be—bad air? What is the quickest way to let the bad air out and the fresh air in? Why are you given recess?
4. What is a draft? Are drafts dangerous?
5. Will night air hurt you? What air can you have in the house at night except night air?

II. Hearing and Listening.

1. Have you ever slept in a house close to a railway? What did you notice whenever a heavy train went by? What made the bed tremble?
2. If you have stood very near a moving train, how did your ears feel? Why?
3. How far do sound waves travel after they enter the ear? Could a person be deaf who had two perfect ears? Where would the trouble be?
4. Draw a picture to show the parts of your left ear, and name each part.
5. How do you take care of your ears?
6. Comment on doing each of these things:—firing a bean shooter at anyone; throwing gravel or sand; firing off a cap or torpedo close to some one’s head; boxing a person on the ear; running a nail cleaner or pencil point into your ear; putting on the baby’s cap so that the ears are folded forward; asking your teacher to repeat her question.
7. Have you tried to train your ears? How?—and why?
8. Find out about some business, or occupation, in which it is necessary to have very keen hearing, and write a little story about it.

III. Seeing and Reading.

1. Are you seated now in the best way for reading or not? Why?
2. Why is it well to look up often, as you read?
3. How far from your eyes ought you to be able to hold this book to read it easily? If you cannot, what should you do?
4. Draw a picture of someone’s eye, as you see it, naming the parts.
5. Draw a picture of your eye as it would look if you could see the eyeball from the left side, and name the parts.
6. What takes the sight message to the brain?
7. How does the nerve of the eye (the optic nerve) get its messages? What, then, is light? If the light waves enter the ear, can they make you hear? Why not?
8. When a baby is born, what care should be taken of its eyes immediately, and why?
9. Have you ever played any games in which the sharpest eyes won? What were they?
10. Write a little story about the picture on p. 59.

IV. A Drink of Water.

1. Why do we want to drink water? How would you know that your body must have a great deal of liquid in it?
2. Do you know where the water you drink at school comes from? If you don’t, try to find out; and find out also just how it is brought to the school and why it flows up to the faucets.
3. If you get drinking water from a well, either at home or at school, tell where this well is—how near the house or the out-buildings. Do you think that any waste from these buildings could drain into the well? Why?
4. At your sand table or from a sandpile in the yard, lay out a farmyard, showing where the house, the barn, the chicken yard, and the pig-sty, also the privy vault, are. Now locate the well so that it cannot receive drainage from any of these places.
5. What is the danger in using drinking water from a stream?
6. How could the germs of typhoid fever get into the milk we drink?
7. What do we mean by fermented drinks? Name some. What is in these drinks that is so very harmful?

V. Little Cooks.

1. Do you bring luncheon to school? What do you like to have for your luncheon? Talk about this in class with your teacher, and find out what things are best for school luncheons.
2. How is your luncheon packed? Why ought it to be neatly done?
3. How long do you take for luncheon, or for dinner at home? Is this time enough?
4. What do you do right after eating? Is this what you ought to do? Why?
5. What foods do you know how to cook? Write out the recipe for something you have made, showing what you mixed and how you did it; and in what, and how long, you cooked it.
6. Give three reasons for cooking food.
7. How is fried food so often made indigestible?
8. Are sweet foods good or harmful? What does sugar come from? How is it made?
9. Write a little story about one of these things: My First Lesson in Cooking; Our Taffy Party; How I Kept Flies out of the Kitchen; How We Boys Cooked Breakfast (or Supper); My Marketing.

VI. Tasting and Smelling.

1. If anyone asked you how a lemon tastes, what would you say? What would you say about sugar? Salt? Pepper? Pickles? Strawberries? Cheese? Onions? Radishes? How did you learn about each of these?
2. What does your tongue do besides receiving tastes? Note in the picture (p. 86) how strongly your tongue is rooted; point to the tip of it in the picture.
3. How does your nose help your throat and your lungs? How else may it help you?
4. Draw a picture to show how air reaches the lungs.
5. What are adenoids? How may you know if you have adenoids? If you have, what ought you to do? Why?
6. Where do the men who want to smoke in the open trolley car have to sit? Why? If children breathe tobacco smoke, what effect will it have on them? Why is smoking a foolish habit? How is it often harmful?

VII. Talking and Reciting.

1. When you are reciting in class, do you think how your voice and the words sound to the other people in the room? Show the class how you can make your speech sound just as you want it to.
2. Give three ways in which you can take care of your throat and voice. Put your hand on the place where your voice is made. How is it made?
3. On your own picture of the throat, show where those little folds of skin are (the picture on p. 86 shows, of course, only the fold of skin, or vocal cord, on the right half of the windpipe).

VIII. Thinking and Answering.

1. With two or three of your classmates, play telephone;—one must be “Central” and one “Information” at the central office, and one must receive your message and answer it. A number of the other children may join hands to make a long “wire” on each side of “Central”; they will repeat the message softly from one to another all down their “wire.”
2. Now, suppose that you all represent the telephone system in the body. Could you act out this “Body-Telephone” call:—The eye sees a burning match on the floor, and sends the message to its center in the brain; this center consults the memory (“Information”) as to what to do. Memory recalls that burning matches are likely to set fire to other things and ought to be put out. So the brain sends a message to the muscles of the foot to get to work and stamp out the flame. In this play, what will you each call yourselves?
3. Make up some other “Body-Telephone” plays.
4. What are some of the messages that are being carried by your nerves, that you know nothing about?
5. Think how many messages a baby stores away before he is ready to answer them; what are some of these? Why can he not answer them at once? What makes his brain and nerves and muscles grow? How can you take the best care of yours?
6. In the picture on p. 96, point to the brain; to the spinal cord. How near the surface of your back is your spinal cord? What keeps it from being easily injured?

“Absent To-day?”

I. Keeping Well.

1. Why do our bodies need “housecleaning”? How do we get rid of the waste part that is a gas? Of the part that is water? What carries the carbon dioxid to the lungs? What carries the waste water to the sweat tubes and the kidneys? What other waste is there to be gotten rid of?
2. Suppose that you and your chum each have an equal chance to take a bad cold from someone else; your chum catches it, and you don’t. What might be one reason why you don’t? Place your hand over your liver. How can you keep it in good working order?
3. What is the bladder? Why is it so very necessary to empty the bladder regularly? When you perspire freely, how does that help the kidneys?

II. Some Foes to Fight.

1. You have seen moldy bread? What is, the mold? What makes it spread?
2. Suppose you take some pieces of moldy bread or potato and turn a glass jar or bowl over them. Catch a few flies and put them under the glass, and leave them to crawl over the moldy food. After a day, put the flies under another glass with some pieces of fresh bread or potato. If you find that the fresh food quickly becomes moldy, how will you think that the mold germs came to it? (If you keep the jars in a warm place, the germs will grow faster, and you won’t have so long to wait before you can see the mold.)
3. What other kinds of germs do flies carry? How do they carry them?
4. A Board of Health caused a liveryman to be fined because he allowed a manure pile to remain behind his stable. Why was his act a misdemeanor? From what do flies come, and how do they grow?
5. On your way to and from school, what have you noticed that could breed or attract flies? How could these things have been avoided?
6. The next time you go into a butcher shop or grocery store, notice how the things are kept and be ready to tell the class what you think about it.
7. In what ways may germs be carried, besides by flies?
8. What do we mean by the “Great White Plague”? Why is it called this? What are people doing to try to cure it?
9. What can you do to help prevent it?
10. Why ought you to stay away from other people when you have a cold? What do you need most in order to get well?
11. Do you always have your own towel to use? Why should you?
12. Write a little story about the picture on p. 112.

III. Protecting Our Friends.

1. Is there a Board of Health in your town? If not, what takes its place? See if you can find out some of the things that the Board or the Officers have done for the town.
2. What do we mean by quarantine? What is the quarantine station in ports where passenger steamers land? See if you can find out about any time when a city or port was guarding its people against an infectious disease.
3. Have you been vaccinated? How was it done? Why was it done? How do we all know that it is a very wise thing to have done?
4. How can you help the Health Officers to keep your town a healthful place?

Work and Play

I. Growing Strong.

1. When you play out of doors, what do you exercise? What do you exercise when you study? How ought you to play and study so as to get the most good from each? Why is it good to play, and work too, out of doors?
2. What games have you played in the last day or two? How did the players divide the muscle exercise of the game? Did they divide up the thinking part, too?
3. Why must the blood be sent to the muscles? Why must it be carried away again? When you feel tired, what is happening in your body?
4. What are muscles like? Show how the elastic bands of your legs work when you sit on your heels. What makes the muscles at the back of your legs feel thicker?
5. What bones of your body can you feel? Put your hands on them, as you tell what you can about each.
6. Why do we need bones? What do we call our whole framework of bones?
7. Have you ever seen anyone who had to stay all the time in bed or sit in a wheeled chair? How did this person show the lack of exercise?
8. What is the meaning of the picture on p. 129?
9. Choose one of the other pictures in this chapter and write a story about it to show how to grow strong.

II. Accidents.

1. When you hear the word accident, what do you think of? What have you to help you to prevent accidents? If you have used your “look-out department” as well as you can, and still the accident happens, what will you do then?
2. Show the class how to care for a very deep cut. What do we call a medicine that kills disease germs?
3. How would you treat a bruise? A burn? Frost-bitten ears? Chilblains? A bee sting?
4. If you are told to take some medicine from a certain bottle or box, do you always look at the label? Why is it dangerous not to? What do you think of having medicines about not labeled or poured into old bottles with wrong labels?
5. If you should happen to swallow something poisonous, what ought you to do right away?
6. Suppose your clothes or your hair should catch fire; what would you do?
7. How did you celebrate last Fourth of July? Write a short story about the picture on p. 144.
8. With one of your classmates, show how you would try to restore a person who had just been saved from drowning. How can you try to save yourself if you fall into the water?

III. The City Beautiful.

1. Have you a park near your home? When the people leave at the end of the day, how do the lawns and paths look? Are there cans in the park to hold the papers and scraps?
2. How are the streets in your town cleaned in winter? In summer?
3. How do the houses get rid of their waste?
4. If the waste goes into a river, is the river water used for drinking? Who decides where the drinking water for the town shall come from?
5. Why are drinks containing alcohol harmful to take (give four reasons)? What is a narcotic? How does drinking alcohol lead to crime?
6. Write down five ways in which you can help to keep your town or city beautiful. Five ways in which you can help to keep your own home beautiful.
7. Why should every city have parks for the children?

The Evening Meal

1. Play housekeeping, and order the dinner.
2. Write down a list of things for a good supper.
3. Why does Nature give us so many different kinds of food? How does she teach us not to eat too much of one kind at a time?
4. Write down on the board as many of each of these kinds of food as you can:—meats; vegetables; fruits; breads; sweet foods; fish; grains; food (not fruit) that does not need cooking; food to drink.
5. How do you help to make meal times pleasant? Make up a story about the picture on p. 159, and tell it in class.

A Pleasant Evening

1. Just after a meal, what is your stomach doing? How can you help your digestion?
2. Have you played any of the games mentioned here? How did you play them?
3. Look at the picture on p. 165; why is this a good after-supper corner? How do you sit and hold your book when you read in the evening?
4. What parts of your body are you exercising and taking care of when you read? Of what use is a healthy, vigorous body without a healthy, vigorous mind? How can you keep your mind healthy? How can you keep it vigorous?
5. What kind of books do you like best to read? Tell the class the names of some good ones.

Good Night

I. Getting Ready for Bed.

1. At what hour do you go to bed? When do you get up? How many hours’ sleep does this give you? Is this enough? Why do you need so much sleep?
2. As you undress, what do you do with the clothes you take off? Why should you air your clothes every night? How can you take an air bath? Is this as good as a wash?
3. How do you care for your hair at night?
4. Do you ever go to bed without brushing your teeth? If you do, what happens all night long to the food scraps that were left around and between your teeth? As these scraps decay, what harm do they do? What makes a tooth ache?
5. Draw a little picture of your own teeth as you see them in a looking-glass. Are there any spaces that you can see where food might lodge and stay? How can you keep your teeth quite free from scraps of food?
6. Why are teeth necessary? How must they grow to make good cutting tools? If they are not straight or sound, what can you do about it?
7. Why ought children’s first teeth to be thoroughly brushed every day?

II. The Land of Nod.

1. When you are ready for bed, how do you fix your windows? Why is it even more necessary to have the air blowing through the room at night than in the daytime?
2. How else is your body being purified at night? Does your body do any work while you are sleeping? What work?
3. What kind of sleep should you have if you are perfectly well?