The Childs Day | Page 7

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 that your shoes are mended, or
that you have a larger pair. And then, if you wash your feet in cold
water every day, and put some vaseline or sweet oil on the hard spot
night or morning, the corn will probably go away.
Not only your shoes, but all of your clothing must be comfortable if
your skin and the parts under it are to do their work well. Your clothes
as well as your skin must be washed often, because the sweat, which is
oily and greasy as well as watery, soaks into them, and the little white
scales cling to them, and often dust and disease germs, too.
One winter a little boy came to my school. The other children told me
they did not like to sit by him, his clothes had such an unpleasant smell.
I talked to him about it, and what do you suppose he said! "Why, I can't
bathe; the creek's too cold in winter." He was waiting till summer time
to take a bath! No wonder the other children did not like to sit near him.
Yet, with all the bathing and rubbing and brushing, your skin won't be
clean and beautiful and able to do all that it has to do, unless your
stomach and heart and lungs are in good working order. So you must
eat good food, sleep ten or twelve hours a day, and play out of doors a
great deal, if you expect your skin to be healthy.

BREAKFAST
When you are washed, it doesn't take you long to dress; and before you
have finished brushing your hair, you begin to feel as if you were ready
for breakfast. You know just where the feeling is--an empty sensation
near the pit of your stomach, and you don't have to look at the clock to
know that it is breakfast time.
About this time something begins to smell very good downstairs; and
down you go, two steps at a time, and out into the dining-room, or
kitchen. You could do it with your eyes shut, just following your nose;

and it is a pretty good guide to follow, too. If you will just go toward
the things that smell good, and keep away from, or refuse to eat, those
that smell bad, you will avoid a great many dangers, not only to your
stomach, but to your general health; for a bad smell is one of Nature's
"black marks," and you know what they are.
How nice and fresh and appetizing everything looks--the white cloth,
the clean cups and saucers, and the shining spoons and forks. You are
sure that a good breakfast is one of the best things in the world. You sit
down and begin to eat, and everything tastes as good as it looks.
[Illustration: MILK AND SUNLIGHT DON'T AGREE
The early riser can help a great deal by taking the milk bottles in out of
the sun. Milk spoils quickly if it is not kept cool.]
A good breakfast would be an egg, or a slice of bacon or ham, with a
glass of milk,--or two, if you can drink another,--and two or three slices
of bread, or toast, with plenty of butter; and then some cereal with
plenty of cream and sugar, or some fruit, to finish with. A breakfast like
this will give you just about the right amount of strength for the
morning's work. Don't begin with a cereal or breakfast food; for this
will spoil your appetite for your real breakfast. Cereal has very little
nourishment in proportion to its bulk and the way it "fills you up."
Bread or mush or potato alone is not enough. Any one of these gives
you fuel, to be sure; but it gives you very little with which to build up
your body. For that you must have milk or meat or eggs or fish.
It is most important that children should eat a good big breakfast. All
the hundred-and-one things that you are going to do during the
day--racing, jumping, shouting, studying--require strength to do; and
that strength can be got only out of the power in your food, which is
really, you remember, the