The Child's Day Part 6

Remember that you want the air you breathe perfectly fresh and clean and not spoiled and poisoned by tobacco smoke.

VII. TALKING AND RECITING

When I was little and playing with my brothers, I did not always do what they wanted. So they'd sometimes say, "We'll put him in Coventry, then he'll do it." They did not really _put_ me anywhere. They simply would not speak to me or answer anything I said. It was just as if I were entirely alone. Of course it was a quick way to make me ready to take my part in the game again.

How do you think you would feel if you never, never could speak to anyone, and no one could speak to you? What a quiet world we'd have!

Almost every day I meet a boy who can't hear and can't speak. How does he ask for things? He makes letters and spells words with his fingers, and his friends watch his fingers and read what he says. Is that the way you do? "No, indeed," you say, "I talk." "What do you talk with?"

"I talk with my mouth." Yes, that's true enough; but if you did not use something besides your mouth, you'd never make a sound.

Where does the sound come from? Feel gently with your finger and thumb along the front of your neck. Do you find something harder than the rest of your throat? That is the large tube called your _windpipe_. Do you feel a ridge sticking out from this? Now sing or talk a little.

You can feel the ridge move up and down, and the sound thrill in it.

That is where the sound comes from. That is your voice-and-music box, or _larynx_.

You have seen the little red rubber balloons, haven't you? You blow into them until they are big and round; and then, when you take your mouth away, out comes the air, making a squawking or whistling sound.

Now, if you look closely at the mouthpiece, you see a tiny piece of rubber tied across it. The air rushing past this rubber is what makes your balloon sing.

Your own music box is made on the same plan. When you breathe out, the air is pushed from your lungs up the pipe that we call the windpipe.

In the upper part of this is the little box, a corner of which you can feel with your thumb and finger. Across the box, inside, are stretched two folds of skin and muscle, just as the rubber is stretched across the opening of the balloon. Whenever you like, you can blow out your breath between these folds of skin in your voice box. Blow it out in one way, and what happens? You are singing. Blow it out in another way, and you are talking; in still another way, and you are just making a noise--perhaps mewing like a kitten, or neighing like a horse. If you pull these folds of skin close together, you can close your windpipe and "hold your breath." A cough is made by filling your chest with air, holding the folds close shut, and then suddenly "letting go." How many sounds you can make from one tiny music box! Of course the muscles of the mouth and throat, and the teeth and the tongue all help the voice box as much as they can.

One of the best ways to keep your voice clear and strong is to dash cold water every morning on your throat and chest, then to rub with a coa.r.s.e towel till your skin is pink and warm. Gargle your throat with cold water if your voice is husky. Singing is very good for you, too; but don't try to sing too hard. Sing easily and gently, and see how many words you can sing without taking a breath. That is good for the lung-bellows as well as the voice box. Always sing in fresh air, but not in cold air.

When you talk, try to make all the words clear and distinct; open your mouth and let the sound out. Once I had a big grown boy in one of my cla.s.ses who did not open his lips properly when he spoke. So I asked him to prop his mouth open with a piece of stick and then talk. I made him do it until he learned to speak much more clearly. A famous Greek orator, named Demosthenes, who had a habit of mumbling his words, trained himself to speak clearly by putting pebbles in his mouth and then reciting in a loud voice.

When you want your voices to sound pleasant,--and that is always, of course,--you must call on your brain to help. That is your thinking machine. Always think twice before you let anything unpleasant or unkind come out of your voice box. How happy we could make everyone about us if we followed this rule!

VIII. THINKING AND ANSWERING

Suppose, as you are walking home from school to-day, you are about to cross the street when you see an automobile coming very fast. What do you do? You stop, of course; wait for it to go by, and then start on again. Why do you stop? "Why," you say, "if I didn't, the automobile might run over me." Something of that sort would just flash through your mind, wouldn't it, in the very same second that you first saw the automobile coming. Now, as you know, you think with your brain. But what was it this time that set your brain to thinking? "Nothing," you say, "I just saw the automobile coming." And that is true in a way: you didn't need anything more than your eyes to tell you.

But how did your eyes get the message to your brain, and how did your brain tell your legs to stop walking? We must have in our bodies a kind of telephone system. And that is, in fact, just what we have. Our _brain_ is our "central office"; and our _nerves_ are the wires, running from all parts of our body to the brain, carrying messages back and forth.

An old man and an old woman lived out on the very edge of a little town. One day their house caught fire and was blazing away before they noticed it. They rushed to their neighbor's telephone and rang up "Central" to tell her to "phone" for the firemen and hose cart. _Kling a-ling-a-ling!_ went their bell, but no "Central" answered; and while a man was running to town to get the firemen, the fire got such a good start that the house burned down.

You can see from this why we need a central office in good working order, when we use the "phone." All the wires run into the one building, and there must be some one there to receive calls and see that they are sent out to their proper places. In this case, you see, "Central" should have been at her post to see that the message went on to the engine house, and then the fire would have been put out "double-quick."

The "central office" of our Body Telephone System is just as important and just as necessary to keep in good working order. It would be very little use to have even the keenest of eyes and the sharpest of ears, with the readiest of nerve wires to carry their messages into the center of the body, unless we had some _organ_, or headquarters, there for switching the messages over to the nerves running to the right muscles to tell them what to do. If the brain-"Central" should fail in its duty, or get out of order, then the body would be in serious trouble at once.

Every day we read in the papers of accidents because somebody didn't think, as well as see or hear. People see cars and automobiles coming, but don't give them a thought and so are run down and hurt. They hear the whistle of the engine at the crossing, but drive on just the same, without seeming to have heard it at all. They are absent-minded; the operator in the "central office" seems to be off duty, or busy about something else. But if we are going to get on in this world of cars and automobiles and all sorts of unexpected things, we must always "have our wits about us," as the saying goes, ready to send the messages out to the muscles in our legs and arms and fingers just as soon as any one of our "Five Senses" "rings up" the "Central" in our brain.

Our body wires do not look at all like telephone wires; and the brain, if you could see it, would never suggest to you a central office.

The nerves are fine white cords, the smallest ones finer than a hair, and the largest so big and strong that you could lift the body by it; and their branches run all over the body, to the muscles and the blood tubes and the skin and all the other parts, as the picture shows. You have already read how the skin can tell you when you feel warm and when you feel cold and when something hurts you.

The brain is a soft wrinkled ma.s.s, partly gray and partly white. It is in the head; and because it is very soft and easily hurt, Mother Nature has put around it a strong wall, or sh.e.l.l, of bone--the _skull_, or brain box. Feel your head and see how very hard this bone is. Solomon, the Hebrew poet-king, called it the "golden bowl." I suppose he called it a "bowl" because it is round like one, and "golden" because it is so precious. People do not often grow well again if the "golden bowl" is broken or even cracked.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NERVOUS SYSTEM--OUR BODY TELEPHONE

The picture shows the brain, or "Central," and the thick nerve cord that runs down through the backbone, and the princ.i.p.al nerves of the back and the arms.]

The big _nerve cable_, called the _spinal cord_, that connects the brain with the rest of the body, and carries all the messages backward and forward, runs down the back and is protected by the backbone, or _spine_, which is hollow, so that the cord can run down through it.

This backbone is jointed together so beautifully, too, that you can bend your back about and stoop over, and carry heavy weights on your back, and yet the bony tube still protects the cord inside. Solomon calls this the "silver cord," because it is so white and shiny that it looks like silver. You see, our bodies are full of beautiful as well as wonderful things.

Probably sometime when your teacher has asked you to recite a poem you have all learned, someone in the cla.s.s has answered, "I don't remember it," or has stood up and recited the first few lines and then stopped, and thought, and finally had to say, "I can't go on."

Now what is the matter with this boy, or girl? He looks bright enough, and you will probably remember that he was in the cla.s.s when you learned the poem. "Oh," you say, "the poem didn't stay in his head."

No, it didn't "stick" in his memory; but why didn't it?

Some of the messages that the Five Senses carry to the brain are answered at once, as when we move away from danger, or reach out our hands and help ourselves to b.u.t.ter, or take off a shoe to shake out a pebble. But there are other messages that do not call for an immediate reply, and are just stored away for future use in the big "central office" of our Body Telephone, in what we call our _memory_. And later, when the proper message is sent in by our eyes or ears, or other sense organs, which reminds us of this message which they sent before, perhaps several weeks, months, or even years ago, it wakes up the old message stored away in the memory, and we say we "remember"

what happened to us, or what we learned at that time.

So, when your teacher asks you to recite a certain poem, and your ears hear the t.i.tle or the first line, you recall the rest of the verses and the lesson about it. How many things does the word "Christmas"

wake up out of your memory? or the sight of soldiers marching? or the first taste of strawberries in May?

You think about a great many things that you never _do_. Really you are thinking almost all the time you are awake. And besides the messages that "Central" just stores away for future use, there are a great many messages being carried back and forth along the "telephone system" all the time, that you don't keep track of at all--the messages that keep the stomach and the heart and the lungs and everything in your body working together properly.

How are we to take care of the telephone lines and "Central" of our _nervous system_? Whatever you do to build up and help the other parts of the body will help your brain to _feel_ and _think_ and _remember_; and will help your muscles and nerves to answer promptly and truly whatever the message may be. Plenty of good food, plenty of sleep and fresh air, plenty of play, will keep your nerves and brain healthy and growing.

"ABSENT TO-DAY?"

I. KEEPING WELL

How many times have you been absent this term? No oftener than you were obliged to be, I am sure; for it's almost as bad as being "put in Coventry" to come back and hear about the good time the rest of the cla.s.s have been having, and feel that you "weren't in it." Of course, sometimes, when you are not well, you have to be absent; it is best that you should be. But it is better still to know how to keep well, so you won't have to be absent, and won't have to miss any good times in work or play all your life.

You remember that all the parts of your body are fed and ventilated by the blood, which is pumped to them from the heart. So long as this blood is pure and has plenty of oxygen in it, it does good to every part of the body to which it comes. But the moment that poisons and dirt and waste begin to pile up in the blood, then the blood that comes to the different parts of the body may be poisonous to them, instead of helpful.

Such poisons in the blood are particularly harmful to the nerves and the brain, because these are among the most delicate and sensitive of all the structures in the body.

Often we think of the body as a beautiful house. Now a house does not look very beautiful when it has dust and crumbs on the floor, buckets of greasy dishwater in the kitchen, and smoke from the furnace in the air! You could not live in such a place. No, the smoke must go out up the chimney, the dust and crumbs must be swept away, the dirty water must be drained off in pipes; the house must be not only cleaned, but kept clean all the time. This is true of your body, too.

Now Mother Nature sends the smoke from the body out through the lungs, and the crumbs and solid dirt down and out by means of the food tube.

But the waste water--how does she get rid of that? The waste water, you remember, is in the blood vessels, mixed with the blood. How does she get it out of the blood? She sends it through three magic cleaners, or strainers,--the _skin_, the _liver_, the _kidneys_.

That the skin is a strainer, you already know; for you know how the skin lets out the waste water in perspiration, or sweat, and how important it is that we keep the little holes of the strainer open and clean. And you know, too, that most of the water that pa.s.ses out of the body goes first to the kidneys.

The liver, however, is the largest cleaning machine of all and has to work very hard. The blood comes to it full of foods and poisons. This wonderful cleaner picks out the food it needs and takes up many of the poisons, too. "What does it do with the poisons?" you ask. Some of them it changes into good food, and others it makes harmless and sends away down the food tube in a fluid called _bile_. If we are strong and healthy, the liver has the power to kill many of the disease germs that get into the body. That is why sometimes, when you have had a chance to take mumps or grippe or some other "catching" disease, you don't take it. Your liver kills the germs, or seeds. See how carefully Mother Nature has planned that we may be clean inside as well as outside.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE POSITION OF THE LIVER

Compare this with the diagram on page 26, and see how the liver partly overlaps the stomach.]

But you must not over-work your liver. If you do, it may become too tired to do anything at all. Then all these poisons will spread through the body; the skin and the whites of the eyes will grow yellow, and you will be what is called "bilious." When this happens, the poisons go to your brain, too, and make you feel sad; your tongue looks white instead of pink, and you have a disagreeable taste in your mouth. Your happiness depends very much on your liver.