Excessively long intervals between meals are of course to be avoided, or to be broken by solid luncheons. If the above amount of sleep be allowed, there will not be time for more than three regular meals and a lunch.

Late dinners are apt to interfere with children's sleep; if, for instance, the family meal is from six to seven, and the children go to bed from eight to nine. A hearty, comfortable dinner about the noon-time is much better. It is perfectly true that the afternoon session is likely to be rather a sleepy one; this should induce the judicious teacher to shorten the session, and to prefer manual tasks (writing, drawing, etc.) rather than those that call for thought. Afternoon lessons add very little to the child's stock of knowledge.

Is there an antagonism between food and study? Is the mind paralyzed by the contact with the gross material aliment? If it be so, why not make the practical inference, and reduce the amount of food in order to study better? This proposition, insane as it looks to one who understands the physiological law of our living, is no doubt seriously acted upon by many ambitious scholars. To such I would saythough with small hope of being heard-that it is no disgrace to the mind that it is attached to a body. Its Creator has willed it so, and for this life it must be So. To give a body insufficient food, and to exact a full task from the brain, is slow suicide. The nour

ishment goes to the brain, while the rest of the body grows puny, and the foundation of slow diseases, such as consumption, is often laid. True, there have been men and women with whom sedentary habits and a spare diet have agreed perfectly; but with most men and women the result is dyspepsia, melancholy, and a tendency to consumption or insanity; and as to children, or persons under twenty, a sedentary life with spare diet is a pure absurdity. There are telling maxims, indeed, insisting that we should rescue hours from the night and add them to our lives, and comparing sleep to death :

Stulte, quid est somnus, gelidæ nisi mortis imago ?"

but, before you acknowledge their force, go and look at the sleep of a healthy child. If you are alarmed at being drowsy after eating, recollect that the brightest fire is dulled for a little while after fuel is put on.

In connection with institutions for large boys and girls,-"colleges," as they are sometimes called,—it may be desirable to establish a cheap lunch-counter, which furnishes an inducement to eat solid and wholesome food rather than a stale mess brought from homes at great distances.

Americans, in general, eat a great deal of trash. They are brought up to it. The subject is rather a wide one, but it may be of service to indicate what is not trash: A plenty of roast and less of boiled

meat; a few soups made secundum artem; a fair variety of plain vegetables; an occasional treat of the best fruit, with abundant supplies of apples; good bread of more than one sort; a daily and abundant ration of the simplest and most strengthening food, such as oatmeal or Indian-meal mush, with milk; and, for drinks, water, milk, coffee which contains as little of the original bean as possible, tea that is not too strong, or diluted cocoa. Such a dietary, without the compounds commonly used for dessert, but aided by fresh air, sunlight, and plenty of play, makes healthy children. Fish and eggs and milk are also necessary, but should not be eaten under the impression that they "make brain."

The boarding-schools of our country have a great opportunity for implanting habits of simple and wholesome living. If such schools furnish unwholesome diet, they do it in imitation of the ordinary habits of society. In a well-conducted school, on the other. hand,-where enough of the best and simplest is given,—it is not uncommon for pupils to come from the indulgences of home and holidays dyspeptic and flabby, and to become brighter and stronger as soon as they are subjected to the regimen of school.

CHAPTER IV.

BODILY GROWTH.

IF youth be a formative period, whose product is simply the adult person, then, surely, that period when formation is most rapid,-when a new being par excellence is developing,-deserves the greatest respect and care. In the case of boys, growth goes on at a nearly uniform rate until manhood. Girls, however, concentrate a great deal of growth in a few years. They are shorter and weigh less than boys until the age of eleven or twelve, when they suddenly shoot beyond them, and, for about three years, continue decidedly taller and heavier, after which they resume the former relative position.* would seem reasonable to suppose that girls at this age are less capable of mental application than boys; for it is a general rule of Nature, that when a great demand is made on the system by one set of functions others must remain in comparative abeyance,

It

* Prof. H. P. Bowditch, in " Eighth Annual Report of Massachusetts State Board of Health."

and that when growth is very rapid, mental action is proportionally less so. If girls are often found quicker and brighter than boys at this age, it may, nevertheless, be questioned whether it is right to allow them to come in competition with boys; for pluck and vivacity are not, necessarily, evidence of power.

After this age- that is, about fourteen and fifteen, in most cases-comes the time when girls are undergoing a change which affects the whole system in a different way from mere rapidity of growth,-a change which, if effected quietly and normally, may be said to have laid the foundation of the happiness and health of an entire life. At this period, if at no other, a girl should be protected from the excitement of "society" and late hours, and should receive the support and steadying which regular habits of study impart. It is a more directly practical thing to say that she ought to be treated with leniency at certain times; her work should be lightened, her errors excused, her inattention or unreadiness overlooked, and absence from school allowed if requested.

Many young girls have grown up to be strong and useful women, and have never been aware that their mental powers were less under control than those of boys of their own age,―their school-fellows,—or that there was any physical necessity for their studying less than, or differently from, their brothers. Especially