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.

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 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.

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 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