The Childs Day | Page 8

sunlight stored up in it.
Sometimes, when you come down in the morning, especially if you
haven't had the windows of your bedroom well open so as to get plenty
of air during the night, you may feel that you are not very hungry for
breakfast. Or perhaps, if you have risen late, or are in a great hurry to

get to school in time, you just swallow a cup of coffee or tea, and a
cracker or a little piece of bread, or a small saucer of cereal. This is a
very bad thing to do, because coffee and tea, while they make you feel
warm and comfortable inside, have very little "strength," or food value,
in them, and simply warm you up and stir up your nerves without doing
you any real good at all. A cracker or a single piece of bread or one
large saucer of cereal has only about one fourth of the strength in it that
you will need for playing or studying until noontime. So after you have
started to school with a breakfast like this, about the middle of the
morning you begin to feel tired and empty and cross, and wonder what
is the matter with yourself.
Children of your age are growing so fast that they need plenty of good,
wholesome food. They get so hungry that they want to be eating all the
time. For "grown-ups" three times a day is enough; but for you children,
whose bodies use up the food so fast, it is well to take also a piece of
bread and butter, or two or three cookies, or a glass of milk with some
crackers, in the middle of the morning and again about the middle of
the afternoon. It will not hurt your appetite for dinner or supper, and
you won't be wanting to "pick" at cake and candy and pickles all day
long.
How does eating keep you alive and make you grow? Eating is
somewhat like mending a fire. You put wood or coal on the fire, and it
keeps burning and giving out heat; but if you do not put fresh fuel on,
the fire soon goes out. Just so, putting food into your body feeds the
"body fires" and keeps you warm, and at the same time makes you
grow. Of course the "body fires" are not just like those you see burning
in the stove: there are no flames. But there is burning going on, just the
same.
The food you put into your body must be made soft and pulpy before it
can burn in your muscles. Now you can guess what your teeth are for.
They chop, crush, and grind the food; and the tongue rolls it over and
over and mixes it with the moisture in your mouth, until it is almost
like very thick soup. Then you make a little motion with your tongue
and throat, and down it goes.

[Illustration: THE FOOD TUBE
Note the arrows. This is the trip made by every mouthful of food.]
Where does it go? It is passed down a tube that we call the food tube.
While I tell you about it, you can look at the picture and then try to
draw it yourself.
The food goes quickly down the first part of the tube until it comes to a
part much larger than the rest, which we call the stomach. Here it is
churned about for a long time, and the meat you have eaten is melted,
or dissolved. Then the food goes on into the next part of the tube,
which has become narrow again. This lower part, which is about
twenty-five feet long, is coiled up just below the waist, between the
large bones that you can feel on each side of your body. These coils of
the food tube, we call the bowels.
Winding all around the stomach and bowels are tiny branching pipes
full of blood. They look somewhat like the creepers on ivy, or the
tendrils on grapevines. These suck out the melted food from the bowels.
They take what the body can use, and carry it away in the blood to all
parts of the body. This is the fuel that keeps the "body fires" going. The
tougher parts of the food, which the body cannot use, are carried down
to the lower end of the bowels and pushed out by strong muscles.
This waste should be passed out from the body once every day and at
the same time each day. In the morning after breakfast is perhaps the
best time. If you do not get rid of it every day, it makes poisons, which
go into your blood and soon make you very sick indeed. You must keep
clean inside