TALKS UPON- VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 125 not unkind and even cruel to give out another task before the first is finished and a little time for rest has been given. It will help you greatly in enforcing it upon his mind that he must not eat at irregular intervals. A child's digestive organs may be weak ; he may need to eat more frequently than a grown person, but it should invariably be at some stated time. When an early breakfast has been eaten and children have a long walk to school, they may be allowed to have a simple lunch at the recess, which usually oc- curs long enough before the dinner hour to give time for digestion. A piece of bread and butter and an apple, or a little basket of berries, or one or two figs and some fresh, crisp crackers, make a wholesome lunch. It will be eaten with great relish if the children do not know what is in the little basket hidden by the neat napkin, and they will open it with a feeling of pleased wonder as to what mamma has given them to-day. I called on a lady once whose little daughter of eight or nine years old, an extremely unhealthy looking child, with the dull eyes and muddy complexion that tell so plainly of indiges- tion, came into the room and whispered to her that she was hungry. " Go right to the cake-jar, love, and help yourself." As she turned away, and while still within hearing, her mother said : " She is such a delicate child — ^is never well, in fact — I can refuse her nothing." I thought — perhaps inhumanly — that it is a pity such a child should live to become a burden t(5 herself and to those around her, or to perpetuate the false ideas, or the entire lack of ideas, exhibited in her training. This is the sub- ject upon which I feel strongly, for I have the best inter- ests of childhood at heart, and the amount of ignorance displayed by those who have the charge of children is something which partakes of the nature of a crime — ^for it is inexcusable. It is terrible to think that a woman who knows no more of the human body than she does of the 126 HOUSEHOLD HINTS. composition of the sun has it in her power to ruin the digestive organs of a whole family of children ! I wish that] public opinion would reach this state — that a woman who starts out with a healthy baby, and in a few years, as the result of her care, has a sickly, diseased child, should be regarded as an object of shame, and not be allowed to sit down in satisfied ignorance and put her conclusions against those of men and women who have studied these subjects and who are authorities upon them. There are many mothers who conscientiously use their reason in the management of their children, who avail themselves of all the helps within their reach, and who endeavor to under- stand and minister to the real needs of both body and mind ; but a countless number are no more prepared to deal with the serious problem how our children ought to be fed than the little ones themselves. HAVE ONLY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

not unkind and even cruel to give out another task before the first is finished and a little time for rest has been given. It will help you greatly in enforcing it upon his mind that he must not eat at irregular intervals. A child's digestive organs may be weak ; he may need to eat more frequently than a grown person, but it should invariably be at some stated time. When an early breakfast has been eaten and children have a long walk to school, they may be allowed to have a simple lunch at the recess, which usually occurs long enough before the dinner hour to give time for digestion. A piece of bread and butter and an apple, or a little basket of berries, or one or two figs and some fresh, crisp crackers, make a wholesome lunch. It will be eaten with great relish if the children do not know what is in the little basket hidden by the neat napkin, and they will open it with a feeling of pleased wonder as to what mamma has given them to-day. I called on a lady once whose little daughter of eight or nine years old, an extremely unhealthy looking child, with the dull eyes and muddy complexion that tell so plainly of indigestion, came into the room and whispered to her that she was hungry. " Go right to the cake-jar, love, and help yourself." As she turned away, and while still within hearing, her mother said : " She is such a delicate child — ^is never well, in fact — I can refuse her nothing." I thought — perhaps inhumanly — that it is a pity such a child should live to become a burden to herself and to those around her, or to perpetuate the false ideas, or the entire lack of ideas, exhibited in her training. This is the subject upon which I feel strongly, for I have the best interests of childhood at heart, and the amount of ignorance displayed by those who have the charge of children is something which partakes of the nature of a crime — ^for it is inexcusable. It is terrible to think that a woman who knows no more of the human body than she does of the composition of the sun has it in her power to ruin the digestive organs of a whole family of children ! I wish that] public opinion would reach this state — that a woman who starts out with a healthy baby, and in a few years, as the result of her care, has a sickly, diseased child, should be regarded as an object of shame, and not be allowed to sit down in satisfied ignorance and put her conclusions against those of men and women who have studied these subjects and who are authorities upon them. There are many mothers who conscientiously use their reason in the management of their children, who avail themselves of all the helps within their reach, and who endeavor to understand and minister to the real needs of both body and mind ; but a countless number are no more prepared to deal with the serious problem how our children ought to be fed than the little ones themselves. HAVE ONLY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD.

Household hints