The Childs Day | Page 6

and dirt of all kinds find it a good place in which to hide. Trim your nails with a file, not a knife; and clean them with a dull cleaner, for a sharp-pointed one will scrape the nail and roughen it, or push the nail away from the skin of the finger underneath.
[Illustration: USEFUL TOOLS]
Trim and clean the edges of your nails carefully and thoroughly, but don't fuss much with the roots of them. That little fold of skin there may strike you as untidy, but it covers the soft growing part of the nail; and if you push it back with a nail-cleaner, it may cause the nail to crack and roughen or become inflamed and start a "hang nail" or "run around." If you push it back at all, do so only with the ball of your thumb or finger.
The edges of the nails should be trimmed in a curve to match the curve of the end of the finger. Of course you know that you should never bite your nails, not only because it is a bad habit and will bring a good deal of dirt into your mouth, but because you may bite, or tear down into, the tender growing part of the nail, sometimes called the quick; and then this part may become inflamed, and you will have a troublesome sore on the end of your finger.
[Illustration: DO YOUR NAILS LOOK LIKE THESE?]
Just as your nails are a part of your skin,--hardened from it and rooted in it,--so, too, are your teeth; and, like the rest of the skin, they should be kept thoroughly clean. Every morning and evening at least they should be carefully brushed. If you take good care of your first teeth and have them filled when they need it, you will probably have good permanent teeth, and you won't have to suffer with toothache.
The skin of your head, which grows such beautiful hair, and the hair itself, should be kept clean. There are two things needed for this.
First, the hair should be brushed and combed night and morning. The skin of your scalp is shedding tiny thin scales all day and all night, just as the rest of your skin is doing. Fortunately, your hair is growing from roots under the skin much in the same way as blades of grass grow from their roots; and, as it grows, it pushes up these scales from the surface of the scalp to where you can readily reach them with a good bristle brush. If they are not well brushed out, the dust and smoke from the air will mix with them, and the germs in the dust and smoke will breed in the mixture, and you will soon have "scurf" or dandruff on your head. So give at least fifteen or twenty strokes with the brush before you use the comb. It isn't necessary to brush or scrape the scalp, and a comb should be used only to part the hair or take out the tangles.
The second thing is to wash the hair and the scalp. Boys ought to wash their hair every week; and girls, every two weeks; and girls, especially, should be careful to dry their hair very thoroughly afterwards. You will notice after washing your hair that it feels dry and fluffy, and sometimes rather harsh. This is because the soap and hot water together have washed out of the hair its natural oil, or grease, which kept it bright and soft; and this is why it is better not to wash the hair with soap and hot water oftener than once a week or so. But it shouldn't be shirked when the time does come. Watch how hard your kitten works to keep her fur coat glossy, though it must be tiresome enough to lick, lick, lick.
Sometimes in cold weather your lips and knuckles crack and bleed. That is because the skin on those parts is so thin and so often stretched and bruised. If you will take a little pure olive oil or cold cream and rub it on your lips and hands, it will make the skin softer and not so likely to break.
[Illustration: SHOES THAT SHOW SENSE
Low heels and plenty of room for the toes.]
Sometimes your feet tell you that they need better care. Perhaps your shoes are too tight, or too loose and rub your toes. Soon the skin becomes very hard in one spot, and you have a "corn" on your toe. You must be very, very careful how your shoes and stockings fit. If you should find a corn, or the beginning of one, you had better tell your mother about it, and let her see that your stockings are not too big, so that they wrinkle into folds and chafe, or