to think about it every time we breathed, we should have no time to think of any thing else.

There is one part of the brain that takes care of such work for us. It sends the messages about breathing, and keeps the breathing muscles and many other muscles faithfully at work. It does all this without our needing to know or think about it at all.

Do you begin to see that your body is a busy work-shop, where many kinds of work are being done all day and all night?

Although we lie still and sleep in the night, the breathing must go on, and so must the work of those other organs that never stop until we die.

OTHER WORK OF THE NERVES.

The little white nerve-threads lie smoothly side by side, making small white cords. Each kind of message goes on its own thread, so that the messages need never get mixed or confused.

These nerves are very delicate little messengers. They do all the feeling for the whole body, and by means of them we have many pains and many pleasures.

If there was no nerve in your tooth it could not ache. But if there were no nerves in your mouth and tongue, you could not taste your food.

If there were no nerves in your hands, you might cut them and feel no pain. But you could not feel your mother's soft, warm hand, as she laid it on yours.

One of your first duties is the care of yourselves.

Children may say: "My father and mother take care of me." But even while you are young, there are some ways in which no one can take care of you but yourselves. The older you grow, the more this care will belong to you, and to no one else.

Think of the work all the parts of the body do for us, and how they help us to be well and happy. Certainly the least we can do is to take care of them and keep them in good order.

CARE OF THE BRAIN AND NERVES.

As one part of the brain has to take care of all the rest of the body, and keep every organ at work, of course it can never go to sleep itself. If it did, the heart would stop pumping, the lungs would leave off breathing, all other work would stop, and the body would be dead.

But there is another part of the brain which does the thinking, and this part needs rest.

When you are asleep, you are not thinking, but you are breathing and other work of the body is going on.

If the thinking part of the brain does not have good quiet sleep, it will soon wear out. A worn-out brain is not easy to repair.

If well cared for, your brain will do the best of work for you for seventy or eighty years without complaining.

The nerves are easily tired out, and they need much rest. They get tired if we do one thing too long at a time; they are rested by a change of work.

IS ALCOHOL GOOD FOR THE NERVES AND THE BRAIN?

Think of the wonderful work the brain is all the time doing for you!

You ought to give it the best of food to keep it in good working order. Any drink that contains alcohol is not a food to make one strong; but is a poison to hurt, and at last to kill.

It injures the brain and nerves so that they can not work well, and send their messages properly. That is why the drunkard does not know what he is about.

Newspapers often tell us about people setting houses on fire; about men who forgot to turn the switch, and so wrecked a railroad train; about men who lay down on the railroad track and were run over by the cars.

Often these stories end with: "The person had been drinking." When the nerves are put to sleep by alcohol, people become careless and do not do their work faithfully; sometimes, they can not even tell the difference between a railroad track and a place of safety. The brain receives no message, or the wrong one,