The Child's Day Part 5

It is not only cities and towns that ought to be careful of their water supply. In fact, now, out on the farms and in the healthy country districts, the death rate from typhoid fever has actually become higher than it is in our large cities. The main cause of this is the custom of digging the well in such a place that the waste water thrown out from the house, or the drainage from the barnyard or the pigpen or the chicken-house may wash into it, soaking down through the porous soil. Far more typhoid fever now is spread by means of infected well water than by any other means.

Most dangerous of all is the leakage from the privy vault; as, by this means, the germs of typhoid fever and other diseases that affect the food tube and digestion may drain through the soil till they reach the drinking water in the well. These dangers can be avoided either by having the well dug at some distance from the house and in higher ground, or by having the drainage from the house, barns, and out-buildings piped and carried to a safe distance from the well.

Fortunately, there are only a few kinds of germs that make us sick.

Most germs are helping us all the time; we could not live without them. Some of them make our b.u.t.ter taste good, and others make our crops grow, and others eat up the dirt that would make us sick. But since disease germs are so tiny that we cannot possibly see them with the naked eye, we must know where the water and milk that we use come from, and whether or not they are perfectly clean. Boiling the water will kill these germs and make the water pure. It is better not to boil milk if it can be had from a dairy where the stable and the cows and the milkmen and the pails and bottles are quite clean.

The fruits and fruit juices--lemon and orange and raspberry and lime and grape--give nice wholesome drinks. Home-made juices are much better than those you buy; you can be sure that they are pure and really made from fruit. And just here I want to caution you against buying "pink lemonade" or soda water or any other drink of that sort from the penny venders and open stalls on the street. The drinks they sell are not made from pure fruit juices, but from different flavoring extracts that are made to taste like the fruit and are colored with cheap dyes. Even the sweetening in them is not pure sugar, and they are often made or handled in a careless, dirty manner, or exposed to the dust of the street, and to flies.

Not long ago I was at the home of a friend where for supper we had the nicest grape juice I ever tasted. When I said, "How good it is!" one of the little girls piped up, "Billy and I picked the grapes, and sister made it all by herself. She learned how at cooking school."

When I was packing my suitcase to leave, this little girl brought out a big bottle of grape juice and wanted me to take it with me to remember her by. It was all beautifully sealed with wax, and even this she had done by herself! Do you think I could have kept it that way very long? Perhaps not, it was so good; but if I had wanted it for a keepsake, I could have kept it, sealed as it was, for years and years, and it would have been just as sweet and fresh as when it was given to me.

Suppose, instead of keeping it in its bottle, I had poured it out into a gla.s.s. Can you tell me what would have happened to it then?

In a few days little bubbles would have come, one after another, up to the top of the juice; and soon it would have been all full of bubbles.

What causes the bubbles? Floating all about in the air and sunshine are tiny specks called _spores_. These are to the tiny _yeast_ plants what seeds are to other plants. Seeds fall into the ground and grow, but these yeast spores fall into the grape juice and grow. While they are growing in the grape juice, they eat what they want from the juice; and, as they eat, they make bubbles of carbon dioxid,--which, you remember, forms in our lungs and looks like air,--and of another substance called _alcohol_. Of course, when they have changed the juice in this way, it tastes very different. It is then what we call _fermented_.

_Fermented drinks are harmful_; but some people like bubbling drinks so much that they leave good fresh grape juice open on purpose to let the little yeast plants get into it and make it into what we call _wine_. They treat apple juice in just the same way to make _cider_; and they even take fresh rye and barley and corn, and mash them up, and put yeast plants into the mash to ferment them and make them into _whiskey_ and _beer_. It does seem a pity, doesn't it, to take good foods like wheat and apples and grapes and make them into these things that really do us harm if we drink them.

A very wise man named Solomon, who lived thousands of years ago, warned people not to drink wine, not even to look at it when it sparkled in the cup. He said no really wise man would drink it. Of course not; the wise man uses the food and drink that make his body grow strong and his brain work true, and no fermented drink can do that.

There is no better drink for anyone than clear pure water, and no better food and drink in one than pure fresh milk.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SCHOOL KITCHEN WHERE BOTH BOYS AND GIRLS LEARN TO COOK]

V. LITTLE COOKS

If you have to come so far to school that you cannot go back to dinner and so must bring a luncheon with you, be sure to take plenty of time to sit down and eat it slowly and chew every piece of food thoroughly.

Many children who bring luncheons to school just grab a piece of food in each hand and "bolt" it down as fast as they can possibly bite it off and swallow it, and then rush out to play.

Play is good and very important, but you had better spare ten or fifteen minutes of it in order to chew your lunch thoroughly and swallow it slowly, and then to sit or move about quietly for a few minutes before starting to play hard. This will give your stomach a chance to get all the blood it wants to use in digesting the food; for, you remember, when you romp and play, your blood moves outward toward your skin and away from your stomach. Don't think that, just because you "picnic" at lunch, it is not as important as any other meal.

I hope, however, that it will not be long before almost every school will have a school kitchen and a lunch room; first, so that every girl at least can learn to cook. It is well worth while being able to do; indeed, no girl ought to be considered properly educated until she has learned to cook, and no boy either, for that matter. Then, if the school has this kitchen, it can be used to furnish hot luncheons, or dinners, for those children who cannot conveniently go home in the noon recess. Hot lunches are much more digestible than cold ones, and they taste much better, and are much less likely to be eaten in a hurry.

But why should we learn to cook? Why shouldn't we eat our food raw instead of taking all this trouble and pains to cook it?

I know of a boy--a big lazy fellow--who is always forgetting to do things. He used to go away in the morning without leaving wood enough for the kitchen fire. So his mother said to herself one day, "I'll teach him to remember." The next morning he went off again and left no wood. At noon he came back "hungry as a hunter." She called him in to dinner; and in he came, sat down, picked up the carving knife--then he stopped! What do you suppose was the matter? The beef was raw! Then he lifted the cover of the potato dish, and there lay the potatoes raw!

Then he tried another dish and found nice green peas, but hard as little bullets. They were raw, too! Not even the bread had been cooked; it was a soft, sticky ma.s.s of dough. His mother, who is a jolly old lady, fairly shook with laughter when she told me about it.

She said she never again had to tell him to split wood.

Now that boy didn't need to be told one reason for cooking. We don't like our food raw; it doesn't taste so good. At first, perhaps, that doesn't sound like a very good reason; but it is more important than you think. For it is a fact that, just as soon as you smell food, your stomach begins to get ready the juice that is to digest it. If this very first juice, which is called the _appet.i.te juice_, is not poured out, then the food may lie in the stomach some little time before it begins to be digested at all. So it is quite important that our food should smell and taste and look good, as well as have plenty of strength and nourishment in it.

Another reason for cooking is that it either softens or crisps our food so that we can chew it better and digest it more readily. You know what a difference there is between trying to eat a raw potato and a nice, mealy, well-baked one, or trying to eat popcorn before it is popped and after.

Another good thing, too, cooking does, which is very important. It kills any disease germs, or germs of decay, that may happen to have got upon the food from dust or flies, or from careless, dirty handling.

Of course, some of our food, such as apples and other ripe fruits, and celery and lettuce and other green vegetables, we can eat raw and digest quite well; but we should be careful to see that they have been thoroughly washed with water that we know to be pure. Grocers often have a careless way of putting fruit and vegetables out upon open stands in front of the shop, or in open boxes or baskets inside the store, and leaving them there all day. This is very dangerous, because dust from the street, which contains horse manure and all sorts of germs, may blow in upon them; flies, which have been eating garbage or feeding at the mouths of sewers, may come in and crawl over them. You ought to be very sure that anything that you are going to eat raw, or without thorough cooking, has been well washed. And you ought to ask your mother to speak to your grocer, if he is careless in this way, and have him keep his fruit and vegetables, as well as sugar and crackers and beans and dried fruit, either under gla.s.s or well screened from flies and dust.

More important than almost anything else in good cookery is to keep the food and the kitchen and the dishes and your hands perfectly clean all the way through, so that nothing that will upset your digestion can get into the food. After things are well cooked, it is very important that they should be nicely served on clean dishes, on a clean table cloth, with polished knives and shining spoons and forks.

This means not only that everything about the table and the food will be perfectly clean and wholesome, but that you will enjoy eating it a great deal more. And when you enjoy your food, you remember, your stomach can _secrete_ the juice that is needed to digest it, very much faster and better than when, as you say, you are just "poking it down."

If you have a school kitchen and a lunch room, you can learn the best way of cooking and serving things; and then, perhaps, you can do these same things at home and be a real help. Most children are fond of trying to cook, and I am glad that they are. Everyone, boys and girls both, should know how to cook simple things. Perhaps some day you will be stranded, like Robinson Crusoe, on a desert island! Perhaps the rest of the family may be sick. How nice it would be for you to be able to prepare breakfast for them. I know a family where the youngest boy often rises early and gets breakfast for five. He can fry the bacon and boil the eggs and make the coffee and mush and biscuit just as nicely as his mother can; and he takes pride in it and enjoys it.

Cooking is what we call an art. Everyone, of course, can learn to do it; but some people can do it much better than others, just as some boys and girls can draw better than others. I hope some of you will be what we might call "artist cooks." Take pride in the art and learn all that you can about it. There are so many things a cook should know.

A great deal of good food is spoiled by bad cookery, particularly by frying slowly in tepid grease, or fat, so that it becomes soaked with grease. You should have the frying pan just as hot as possible before you begin to fry; and then the meat or potatoes or cakes will be seared, or coated over, on the outside, so that the fat cannot soak into them, and they will not only taste better, but will be much more digestible.

In baking you will have to be careful not to let the oven become too hot, or else the meat or bread will be burned or scorched. Even if the heat does not do this, it may harden and toughen the outside of the meat so that it is almost impossible either to chew or digest.

Sugar is really a very good food if you do not eat too much at once, and so pure candy is good for you if you do not eat too much. The very best time to eat it is at the end of a meal. If you learn to make it at school or at home, you can always have some to eat after your luncheon without having to buy it. If you do buy candy, don't get the bright colored kind; it looks pretty, but it may hurt you. And be sure to see that it has been kept under a cover, where the dust and flies could not get at it. Dust is dirty, and flies don't wipe their feet.

You want clean, pure candy.

Of course, after cooking, you will always be very careful to wash up all the pots and pans and dishes that you have used. Food and sc.r.a.ps that are left sticking to dishes and cooking utensils very quickly turn sour and decay; and then the next time the dishes are used, you will perhaps have an attack of indigestion, and wonder why.

There are two things you should always notice: Whether the bread you eat is sweet and thoroughly baked; if it is soggy and sour, it will make trouble in your stomach. Whether all your food is clean and fresh before it is cooked; this you can tell by your eyes and nose.

VI. TASTING AND SMELLING

When, at home, you give the baby a ball or a key or a watch to play with, what does he do with it the very first thing? He is never quite happy, is he, until he has put it into his mouth? Does he want to eat it? No, he wants to feel it; and he has not yet learned to feel very carefully with his hands, as you do.

Can you feel with your mouth? If you have the least little hole in one of your teeth, you know it as soon as you rub your tongue against it.

How big it feels and how rough the edges seem! If you take a looking-gla.s.s, you find, if you can see the hole at all, that it is just a tiny, tiny hole.

Your tongue and lips, like the rest of your skin, are always touching and feeling things for you and sending messages to the brain. They say whether your milk is hot or cold, and whether the food you eat is soft enough and quite right in other ways. Your tongue is a very busy little "waiter": he pa.s.ses the food about in your mouth for the teeth to chew, and he rolls it about at a great rate. But he does more than this; he tells you something about how it tastes--not everything, as you may think, but only whether it is _bitter_, _sweet_, _sour_, or _salty_. Queer as it may seem, your nose tells you the other "tastes,"

which are really smells. It is your nose that says whether you have a strawberry or a piece of onion in your mouth, whether it is coffee or cocoa that you are drinking.

Of what other use is your nose?--for only a little patch in the upper part is for smelling and tasting. The greater part of the nose is to breathe through. You see, your nose warms and moistens the outside air that you take in, so that, by the time it reaches your throat, it is as warm as your body and does not hurt your throat. Your nose also strains, or filters, out of the air the dust, lint, and germs that may be floating in it.

You should always keep your lips closed and breathe through your nose.

Whenever you cannot breathe through your nose, there is something the matter. It may be that your nose is swollen shut with a "cold"; but that will last only a few days. If, however, your nose often feels "stuffed up," there is probably something in it or behind it, that ought to be taken away. A throat doctor can easily cure you; and, when he has, you'll be surprised how much better you feel and how much faster you grow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CLEAR Pa.s.sAGE TO THE LUNGS

(Follow the arrows.)]

I once knew a little girl whose nose was always blocked up. She had headache and felt tired most of the time and was behind in her cla.s.ses. The doctor told her what was the matter, but her father and mother were afraid that it might hurt her to have the doctor take out what was clogging her nose. Well, what did she do? Instead of crying and being afraid, one day she walked right into the doctor's office and asked him to take out the _adenoids_, as we call these growths that block up the nose. And after the doctor had taken them out, she began to grow well and fat and strong so fast that she soon "caught up" in her cla.s.ses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Pa.s.sAGE BLOCKED BY ADENOIDS]

When you breathe well through your nose, you can smell and taste better, too. In fact, when your nose is clogged, you cannot smell at all.

How does this sense of smell help us? You say we can smell the flowers and the fresh air after the rain, and cookies baking, and all the things that we like so well. Yes, and these give us pleasure; but how about the bad smells? The bad smells are warnings. If there is a dead mouse or rat about, we smell it; and that leads us to look for it and take it away. We smell the dirt and get rid of it, and thus keep away sickness. When we walk into a room, if the air is bad we smell it at once and open a window or a door, and so save ourselves from being poisoned.

Some people hurt their noses by smoking tobacco. The inside skin of the nose is very delicate, and the smoke going back and forth through the nose and the throat keeps them from doing their work properly. It is very bad for little children even to smell tobacco smoke. It seems in some way to keep them from growing as they would in clear fresh air. What a silly habit smoking is! It does no one any good. It hurts not only the people who make the smoke, but the people who have to smell it. Most of the people who smoke tobacco have to learn to like it. It almost always makes them very sick when they first begin.

Sir Walter Raleigh, or the men he sent to America, first taught our great-great-great-grandfathers to smoke. His men bought tobacco of the Indians here and took it back to England; and Sir Walter himself learned to smoke and made smoking fashionable. The first time that Sir Walter's servant saw him smoking, he thought his master was on fire; so what did he do but bring a big bucket of water and throw it all over him! I wish that that bucket of water had settled the matter, so that Sir Walter had stopped smoking and had never taught anyone else to smoke. If it had, think how much money might have been put to better use, for smoking is a very costly habit. And it is not only wasteful of money, but, worse still, of health; for it is the cause of a great deal of poor health and disease.