The Childs Day | Page 3

asleep, your skin has been at work cleaning and purifying your blood, pouring out gases and a watery vapor that we call perspiration, or sweat; and these impurities have been caught by the sheets and blankets. So after a bed has been slept in for four or five nights, if it has not been thrown well open in the morning, it begins to have a stuffy, foul, sourish smell. You can see from this why it is a bad thing to sleep with your head under the bedclothes, as people sometimes do, or even to pull the blankets up over your head, because you are frightened at something or are afraid that your ears will get cold. Your breath has poisonous gases in it, as well as your perspiration; and the two together make the air under the bedclothes very bad.
Now you are ready to wash and dress. But before you do this, it is a good thing to take off your nightdress, or turn it down to your waist and tie it there with the sleeves, and go through some good swinging and "windmill" movements with your arms and shoulders and back.
(1) Swing your arms round and round like the sails of a windmill; first both together, then one in one direction, and the other in the other.
(2) Hold your arms straight out in front of you, and swing them backward until the backs of your hands strike behind your back.
(3) Hold your arms straight out on each side, clench your fists, and then smartly bend your elbows so that you almost strike yourself on both shoulders, and repeat quickly twenty or thirty times.
(4) Swing your arms, out full length, across your chest five or ten times.
(5) Swing forward and down with your arms stretched out, until the tips of your fingers touch the floor.
(6) Set your feet a little apart, swing forward and downward again, until your hands swing back between your ankles.
[Illustration: STARTING THE DAY]
When you come back from these down-swings, bend just as far back as you can without losing your balance, so that you put all the muscles along the front of your body on the stretch; and then swing down again between your ankles. This will help to tone up all your muscles, and limber all your joints, and set your blood to circulating well, and give you a good start for the day.
III. BATHING AND BRUSHING
Now you are ready to wash and dress. You can easily take off the gown, or garments, that you have worn during the night; but there is one coat that you cannot take off--one that is more important and useful and beautiful than all the rest of your clothes put together, no matter of how fine material they may be made, or what they have cost.
Do you remember the old Bible story about Joseph and his "coat of many colors"? Perhaps you've wished you had one just as nice. Now, the fact is, your coat is more beautiful even than Joseph's; and, as for its uses, it is the most wonderful coat ever made!
This coat of yours changes its color from time to time; sometimes it is pink, sometimes red, sometimes a soft milky white, and sometimes a dull dark blue, or purple. I wonder if you guess what it is. Sometimes it is dry and sometimes wet, sometimes it is hot and sometimes cold, sometimes rough and sometimes smoother than the softest silk--just run your hand gently over your cheek!
Now you have guessed my riddle. This "wonderful coat" is your skin, which covers you from top to toe. It fits more closely than any glove, and yet is so easy and comfortable that it never rubs or binds or hurts you in any way.
[Illustration: THE SKIN-STRAINER
The little pores open in furrows of the skin. This drawing is many hundred times as large as the piece of skin itself.]
Will the wonderful coat wash? Yes, indeed, and look all the prettier. In fact, to keep it white and clear you must bathe often, not only your hands and face, but your whole body. Your skin is a strainer, you know. It is a "way out" for some of the gases and waste water from the blood. What will happen, then, if you don't wash your skin? The little holes, or pores, that the sweat comes through may become clogged. The strainer won't let the poison out, and so it will stay inside your body. Then, too, if you do not wash the skin, the little scales that are peeling off the outside coat will not be cleared away. You have noticed them, haven't you, sometime when you were pulling off black stockings? You found little white pieces, almost as fine as powder, clinging to the inside of the stockings.