“THIS IS FOR YOUR HEALTH.”

“Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise; So generations in their course decay, So flourish these when those have passed away.”

Health is above all Things.

Health is that which makes our meat and drink both savory and pleasant, else Nature’s injunction of eating and drinking were a hard task and a slavish custom. It makes our beds lie easy and our sleep sweet and refreshing. It renews our strength with the morning’s sun, and makes us cheerful at the light of another day. It makes the soul take delight in her mansion and pleasures, a pleasure indeed, without which we solace ourselves in nothing of terrene felicity or enjoyment.—Mainwaring.

Without health there is no earthly blessing. In comparison with health all other blessings dwindle into insignificance. Life is a burden to the perpetual invalid, for whom the only solace is in the silent grave. Nor can such always look forward with perfect confidence to rest even beyond the dark portals of the tomb; for the infirm body is not unusually attended by an enfeebled mind which often jeopardizes Hope:—

“And Hope, like the rainbow of summer,
Gives a promise of Lethe at last.”

If, then, health is so essential to our earthly happiness, and to our hope of peace in immortality, O, let us who possess the boon strive to retain it, and we who have it not seek diligently to regain that which is lost.

The farmer does not consider it a compromise of his dignity to search out the best modes and means for increasing the quality as well as the quantity of his stock—his horses, his oxen, his sheep, and his swine,—and is man, the most noble work of his Maker,—man, created but a little below the angels,—is man an exception to this rule, that he should cease to be the study of mankind? Is humanity below the animals?

Mankind deteriorates while domesticated live stock improves.

God has given us bodies formed in his own likeness, and has pronounced them “good,” hence, not diseased; and it is evidently our most imperative duty to regard it as a great gift, and preserve these bodies as the inestimable boon of the Almighty.

It is very evident that man has fallen far short of the requirements of his Maker.

From Adam to the flood—a space of time estimated at upwards of fifteen hundred years, according to Hebrew chronographers—the average of man’s years was nine hundred. From Noah to Jacob, by the same chronology, it had dwindled to one hundred and forty-seven years. In the ninetieth psalm we read, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten.” From actual statistics it is shown to average now less than one fourth of threescore and ten years.And this fact in the face of civilization, enlightenment, and Christianity! Why so? How shall we account for the evil?

The Psalmist above quoted says further, “and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,” etc., which implies that strength prolongs, and weakness—reversing the matter—shortens our days.

Let us begin at the beginning.

About the Babies.—How they are reared and how they should be.

BABY ON THE PORCH.
Out on the porch, by the open door,
Sweet with roses and cool with shade,
Baby is creeping over the floor—
Dear little winsome blue-eyed maid!
All about her the shadows dance,
All above her the roses swing,
Sunbeams in the lattice glance,
Robins up in the branches sing.
Up at the blossoms her fingers reach,
Lisping her pleading in broken words,
Cooing away, in her tender speech,
Songs like the twitter of nestling birds.
Creeping, creeping over the floor,
Soon my birdie will find her wings,
Fluttering out at the open door
Into the wonderful world of things.
Bloom of roses and balm of dew,
Brooks that bubble and winds that call,
All things lovely, and glad, and new,
And the Father watching us over it all!

“Select the best sprouts for transplanting,” says the “Old Farmer’s Almanac.” And here you have the whole root of the matter in a nut shell; for sickly-looking sprouts produce only sickly-looking plants. Like begets like.

Now, how about the babies? Women’s rights are advocated. Men take their rights. But who shall defend the babies’ rights? Poor, helpless little non-combatants! Let me say a few words in their behalf.

Children, from the cradle, are wrongfully treated. Their first rights are here curtailed. Look at the baby that is permitted to creep out “on the porch,” or over nature’s green carpet, and there bask in the sunshine and frolic in the open air; then look in pity upon the pale weekly house-plant child. The contrast is as striking as lamentable.

“O, he’ll get his death’s cold if the air blows upon him,” hysterically screams the ignorant mother. Yes, “ignorant”—that is the adjective I want to describe her.

The young mother has doubtless been sent to a fashionable boarding-school, where she was taught algebra, French, (?) the art of adornment, how to walk fashionably, eat delicately, and dress À la mode, and even how to make a good “catch,” but never how to preserve her health or rear an offspring. O, this would be shockingly immodest, or “counting chickens before they are hatched,” I once heard a lady affirm.

Nine tenths of our American wives are totally ignorant of everything that pertains to their own health, or that of the healthful rearing of an infant.

Baby in a Strait Jacket.

At first the infant is usually bound tightly in swaddling clothes, lest it move a limb, or for fear (like the down east orator) that it will “bust,” and thus kept from air and exercise the first year or two, till it not unusually becomes a stunted, rickety thing, hardly worth “transplanting” or raising. Haven’t you and I, kind reader, been subjected to something of this sort of strait jacket insanity?—insanity of parents! And having been tolerably strongly constituted from a “tough stock,” we survived that first wrong, whereas thousands of “nicer” babies have succumbed to the swaddling and stifling process.

This is wrong, all wrong. The infant should be left free, at least as to its chest and limbs, in order to breathe, kick, and expand. How happy the little fellows are at evening to get rid of the murderous clothes which have been bundled about them all day, and how they will fight and squirm to get down on the carpet all stripped, and creep, or, if old enough, run about in freedom! How they crow and prattle!

Now, don’t swaddle them—a simple, easy bandage is early admissible,—or cover their heads and faces with caps, sheets, or blankets. Inure them to the air early and continually, and they will have less colds and “snuffles” than if you confined them within doors. Give them air and sunlight, and away with your “goose-grease.” Yes, I have even known some country people to apply skunk’s oil, and others who larded the infant’s nose and chest for the “snuffles.” Croup delights in such babies!

Then from the strait jacket, baby is taken to the other extreme—bare arms, neck, and chest. Old Dr. Warren once said, “Boston sacrifices hundreds of children annually by not clothing their arms and chests.” Once, when in remonstrating with a mother against this barbarous practice of thus exposing her little one-year-old to a chilling atmosphere when my arms and chest were not over warm as wrapped in an overcoat, she replied to me,—

“O, the little dear looks so pretty with its little white arms and neck all bare!”

“Yes,” I replied, sorrowfully, “it will look pretty, also, laid out in its coffin.”

She was greatly shocked by the remark, which, however, too soon proved true.

“Doctor’s stuff” cannot counteract the fatal results of such ignorance and exposures.

TWO LITTLE SHOES.
Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,
Treasured so fondly—never to be worn;
Two little feet laid away in the tomb,
Cold and all lifeless—sadly we mourn.
What trifling things does not a mother keep,
Tokens of love the swelling heart to ease;
Useless little toys—a lock of golden hair;
Something to fondle—to cherish like these
Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,
Treasured so fondly, never to be worn!
These little shoes are only left us now;
Gone is our “darling,” ever to remain;
Dear little feet, so plump and all dimpled,
Never will press them—never again!
But heavenly thoughts shall cheer me on my way:
Death is but life, in fairer, sunnier view;
Busy little feet but just run on before;
This is my solace as my tears bedew
Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,
Treasured so fondly, never to be worn.

Impure Literature and Passions.

It is as marvellous as true that some children survive this treatment; besides the stuffing with meat victuals, candies, and cookies, inducing colic and dysentery; then dosing with rhubarb, paregoric, peppermint, and worse. Soothing syrups! Eternal quietuses! Yes, in spite of extremes of heat and cold, stuffing and dosing with crude and poisonous articles, some babies actually reach the next stage—youth!

From chilled blood, indigestion, poisonous air and drugs, repeated attacks of croup, bronchitis, dysentery, etc., the majority who have reached puberty are afflicted by some scrofulous taint, or development, or broken constitutions.

Now, they have appetites and passions to grapple. We have already, in chapter fifth, shown how the school-girl is cheated out of health by the deprivation of her “rights,” among which are air, freedom, and exercise. Here is another evil, which must not be passed over unnoticed. A New York physician, who wields an abler pen than myself, thus expresses my ideas. What he applies to females is not limited by copyright. Males, help yourselves; it belongs to you quite as much as to the beautiful.

“It sickens the heart to contemplate the education of female children in this city.” (And let me add, in this country.) “Should nature even triumph over all the evils above enumerated, no sooner has the poor girl attained the age of puberty, than her mind and nervous system are placed upon the rack of novel-reading and sentimental love stories. There is just enough of truth in some of these mawkish productions to excite the passions and distract the attention of the young girl from the love of nature and its teachings, and all rational ideas of real life, and to cause her to despise the commonplace parents whose every hour may be occupied for her consideration and welfare.”

This writer goes on to condemn those selfish, money-grasping wretches “professors of religion, too,” in our city, who publish this impure and overstrained literature, to the great injury of the morals of the young; adding, “What language can be too strong for such disgusting hypocrisy? We punish a poor wretch for the publication of an obscene book or print, and give honor and preferment to those who instil poison into the minds of our children by a book prepared with devilish ingenuity, and in every possible style of attraction and excitement.

“It is the premature excitement of the nervous and sexual system that should be avoided. The licentious characters presented in all the glowing tints of a depraved imagination cannot fail to injuriously affect the youthful organism.”

The dissolute and immoral characters whom we debar from the personal friendship of our sons and daughters, whom we exclude from our parlors, and even street recognition, are sugared over, and, between gilded covers, passed freely into the boudoirs, school-rooms, and seminaries of our children, for their companionship at their leisure. The vile characters in person would be far less injurious, for in that case their hideousness would the surer be revealed.

“Nothing can be more certain than the production of these works of a precocious evidence of puberty. The forces of the young heart and vascular system are thus prematurely goaded into ephemeral action by the stimulus of an imagination alternately moved to laughter, and tears, and sexual passion.”

Mr. Baxter, in Part 2, ch. xxi., direction 1, of his Christian Directory, which is a direction for reading other books than the Bible, says, “I pre-suppose that you keep the devil’s books out of your hands and house. I mean cards, and idle tales, and play-books, and romances or love-books, and false, bewitching stories, and the seducting books of false teachers.... For where these are suffered to corrupt the mind, all grave and useful writings are forestalled; and it is a wonder to see how powerfully these poison the minds of children, and many other empty heads.”

It would astonish and shame some parents if they would take pains to look over the books which are daily and nightly perused by their children. It is not enough for you to know that such books were obtained from a “dear friend,” or from a respectable publisher, or pious bookseller, or that they are lawful publications. Parents and guardians, I pray you take warning.

“Our Girls.”

I want everybody, male and female, old and young, to read that most excellent book, “Our Girls,” by Dr. Dio Lewis. It will do you good. For humanity’s sake, and particularly for the benefit of females, I recommend it. Lest some of my readers should not follow this advice, I want to tell you what it says about

Low Neck and Short Sleeves.

“Many a modest woman appears at a party with her arms nude, and so much of her chest exposed that you can see nearly half of the mammal glands. Many a modest mother permits her daughters to make this model-artist exhibition of themselves.

“One beautiful woman said, in answer to my complaints, ‘You should not look.’

“‘But,’ I said, ‘do you not adjust your dress in this way on purpose to give us a chance to look?’

“She was greatly shocked at my way of putting it.

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘this assurance is perfectly stunning. You strip yourselves, go to a public party, parade yourselves for hours in a glare of gas-light, saying to the crowd, “Look here, gentlemen,” and then you are shocked because we put your unmistakable actions into words.’

“In discussing this subject before an audience of ladies in this city (Boston), the other evening, I said, ‘Ladies, suppose I had entered this hall with my arms and bust bare; what would you have done? You would have made a rush for the door, and, as you jostled against each other in hurrying out, you would have exclaimed to each other, “O, the unconscionable scallawag!” May I ask if it is not right that we should demand of you as much modesty as you demand of us?’ But you exclaim, ‘Custom! it is the custom, and fashion is everything.’” Again the author says,—

“This exposure of the naked bosom before men belongs not to the highest type of Christian civilization, but to those dark ages when women sought nothing higher than the gratification of the passions of man, and were content to be mere slaves and toys.

“Boston contains its proportion of the refined women of the country. We have here a few score of the old families, inheriting culture and wealth, and who can take rank with the best. A matron who knows their habits assures me that she never saw a member of one of those families in ‘low neck and short sleeves.’

“In the future free and Christian America, the very dress of women will proclaim a high, pure womanhood.... We shall then discard the costumes devised by the dissolute capitals of Europe.

“What a strange spectacle we witness in America to-day! Free, brave American women hold out to the world the Bible of social, political, and religious freedom, and anon we see them down on their knees, waiting the arrival of the latest steamer from France, to learn how they may dress their bodies for the next month.”

Well, he does not censure ladies in the above manner all through; but yet, in a most earnest and interesting way he divulges the most startling truths, and even very young misses are delighted with the whole argument. “Why, it’s just like a story,” exclaimed my twelve-year-old Katie on reading it.

What Dr. Lewis objects to on the score of immodesty, I also oppose on the ground of unhealthfulness. The idea of preventing or curing the laryngitis, or consumption, in a lady, when there is nothing but gauze, or a bit of ribbon and a galvanized bosom pin, between her neck and the cold and changeable atmosphere of the north or east, is ridiculously absurd. No doctors or doctors’ pectorals can save such. “High necks,” warm flannels, or make your wills.

How and what we should breathe.

It would disgust the reader if I should enter into the details of telling him what people—respectable people, even, in nice houses—breathe over. Air is life. The purer the air, the purer the life-stream that courses through our hearts. You cannot get too much of it. Take it in freely. Have only pure air in your houses, in your sleeping-rooms and cellars. Particularly see that the children have the freedom of the air, day and night, at home, at school, everywhere. It is free—costs nothing!

The Freedom of the Street.

“I dwell amid the city,
And hear the flow of souls;
I do not hear the several contraries,
I do not hear the separate tone that rolls
In art or speech.
“For pomp or trade, for merry-make or folly,
I hear the confidence and sum of each,
And what is melancholy.
Thy voice is a complaint, O crowded city,
The blue sky covering thee, like God’s great pity.”

“Heaven bless the freedom of the park,” has exclaimed a child of song; and he might also have invoked the same blessing upon “the freedom of the street.” The street is free to all; to high and low, young and old, rich and poor. It recognizes no distinctions or castes; it is the very expressiveness of democracy.

The child of fashion, arrayed in silks, ribbons, and furbelows; the child of penury and want, in rags, filth, and semi-nakedness; the shaver of notes and the shaver of faces; the college professor and the chiffonier, all mingle in common on the street. Now walking side by side, now brushing past each other, now stopping to look at the same cause of excitement, now each jostled into the gutter. No distinction in wealth, birth, or intellect is recognized; no one dare attempt to restrict the freedom of the thoroughfare, and none dare say to another, “Stand aside, for I am better than thou.”

The little boy trundles his hoop against the shins of the thoughtful student; the little girl knocks the spectacles from the nose of the man of science with her rope, while the preacher runs against an awning-post to make way for a red-faced nurse with a willow carriage; the antiquated apple woman, and the child with its huge chunk of bread and butter, sit on the curb; the painter digs the end of his ladder rather uncomfortably into some pursy old gentleman’s stomach; while the sweep, with the soot trembling upon his eyelashes, strolls along as independently and leisurely as the dandy in tights, and with the sweeter consciousness that he is doing something for the public good.

THE FREEDOM OF THE PARK.The street is a world in miniature, a Vanity Fair in motion, a shifting panorama of society, painted with the pencil of folly and fancy. It is the only plane upon which society, “the field which men sow thick with friendships,” meets on a common level. It does not flaunt in aristocracy, and never dares to be pretentious.

“Keep your Eyes open and Mouths closed.”

There’s true philosophy in the above saying of a wise savant. But there is more wisdom in the latter clause than he even dreamed of in his philosophy.

The Book informs us that God breathed the breath of life (air) into man’s nostrils. Nothing is more injurious, save continually breathing foul air, than the habit of breathing through the mouth. Keep the mouth closed. A great many diseases of the teeth, mouth, throat, head, and lungs may be traced directly to the pernicious and general habit of breathing with the mouth open—inhaling and exhaling cold air directly into the mouth and throat, inflaming and chilling the mucous membrane and the blood. The nostrils are the only proper passages for the air to the lungs. Here are filterers to exclude particles of dust and foreign matter, and various ramifications, whereby the air is properly warmed before reaching the lining of the throat and lungs. In infected air you are less injured, and less liable to contract contagious diseases, when inhaling only through the natural channel, the nostrils.

I think it was Dr. Good, of London, who wrote a book on the subject, which Carlyle pronounced “a sane voice in a world of chaos.”

George Catlin says he learned the secret of keeping the mouth closed while among the North American Indians. They would not allow themselves or their children to sleep with the mouth open (though their reasoning is questionable), because the evil spirit would creep in them at night. Hence the parent went around after the pappooses were asleep, and closed their mouths. Pulmonary diseases are seldom found in the “close-mouthed.” Kant, the philosopher, claims to have cured himself of consumption by this discovery. Persons never snore except by breathing through the open mouth. O, give us quiet, you snorers, by keeping your mouths shut, even at the expense of “keeping your eyes open” to watch yourself, and thus deliver the world from the disturbance of snoring.

The Lungs.—Breathing.

All that live, down even to vegetables and trees, breathe, must breathe, in order to live; live in proportion as they breathe; begin life’s first function with breathing, and end its last in their last breath. And breathing is the most important function of life, from first to last, because the grand stimulator and sustainer of all. Would you get and keep warm when cold, breathe copiously, for this renews that carbonic consumption all through the system which creates all animal warmth. Would you cool off, and keep cool, in hot weather, deep, copious breathing will burst open all those myriads of pores, each of which, by converting the water in the system into insensible perspiration, casts out heat, and refreshes mind and body. Would you labor long and hard, with intellect or muscle, without exhaustion or injury, breathe abundantly; for breath is the great re-invigorator of life and all its functions. Would you keep well, breath is your great preventive of fevers, of consumption, of “all the ills that flesh is heir to.” Would you break up fevers, or colds, or unload the system of morbid matter, or save both your constitution and doctor’s fee, cover up warm, drink soft water—cold, if you have a robust constitution sufficient to produce a reaction; if not, hot water should be used. Then let in the fresh air, and breathe, breathe, breathe, just as deep and much as possible, and in a few hours you can “forestall and prevent” the worst attack of disease you ever will have; for this will both unload disease at every pore of skin and lungs, and infuse into the system that vis animÆ which will both grapple in with and expel disease in all its forms, and restore health, strength, and life.

Nature has no panacea like it. Try the experiment, and it will revolutionize your condition. And the longer you try, the more will it regenerate your body and your mind. Even if you have the blues, deep breathing will soon dispel them, especially if you add vigorous exercise. Would you even put forth your greatest mental exertions in speaking or writing, keep your lungs clear up to their fullest, liveliest action. Would you even breathe forth your highest, holiest orisons of thanksgiving and worship, deepening your inspiration of fresh air will likewise deepen and quicken your divine inspiration. Nor can even bodily pleasures be fully enjoyed except in and by copious breathing. In short, proper breathing is the alpha and omega of all physical, and thereby of all mental and moral function and enjoyment.

A Man full of Holes.

Yes, made of holes!

A gentleman once told me a story, as follows. We were travelling on the Ohio River, on board of a steamer.

“You see that bank over opposite?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Well, thereby hangs a little story. I always laugh when I think of it, or pass the spot, which is often. A fellow sat looking at that spot, watching the thousands of swallows that were continually flitting to and fro, in and out of their nests, and laughing immoderately to himself. I approached, and ventured to inquire the cause of his mirth, that I might partake of it.

“Well, you see that bank and all them nests? Well, one day I went down on the boat and noticed them. When I came back, there had meantime been a heavy rain storm which washed the bank away, and left the holes all sticking out;” and the fellow continued to laugh as though he would split himself, probably from the idea of the holes “sticking out.” I wondered how he could see them if the bank around was washed away.

Still the man full of holes is a fact. According to Krause, quoted in Gray’s and Wilson’s works on anatomy, there are twenty-eight hundred (2800) pores in the skin of the human body to the square inch; and the number of square inches to an average-sized man is twenty-five hundred (2500). This would give some seven million pores in the whole body. These pores, or tubes, are one fourth of an inch in length; hence, the entire length of them all is twenty-eight miles.

That part of the skin is the healthiest which is the most exposed to the air, as the face and hands. That part the most diseased from which the air is most excluded, as the feet. Three fourths of all persons over fourteen years of age have diseased feet; either corns, chilblains, or diseased joints or nails.

Seven Million Mouths to Feed.

These seven million mouths must be fed daily and hourly. Their food is light and air. Man is not only fed and nourished through the portal of his mouth, but through all the pores of his body, by drawing in nutriment from the surrounding elements, even from the viewless air.These little mouths also need moisture. This fact is revealed to the senses through the medium of the nerves; for, how grateful to the dry, parched skin, is a bath of cold water! or, if the blood is in a “low state,”—impoverished by disease,—let it be a tepid bath. Let it feel comfortable and grateful to the user. This is a good rule to direct you. The little children love it—love to paddle and splash in it. If they cry and fight against washing, it is usually because of the rudeness of the operator, who, with brawny palm or rough sponge takes the child unawares, nearly suffocating it, and briskly and rudely rubbing over the surface of the tender face, regardless of such small obstructions as nose, chin, and lips, and not unusually dashing a quantity of yellow soap suds into the infantile eyes. The next time the little fellow is requested to be washed, he, remembering the last scouring, naturally objects to a repetition of the unpleasant process.

As the nostrils inhale pure air beneficially, they also exhale impurities. The pores also excrete, or throw off impurities. A healthy skin will throw out, by the pores, from two to three pounds of impure matter every twenty-four hours. To be sure a greater quantity of this impurity is a vapory substance, yet that holds in solution solid particles of corrupt matter, which greatly tend to clog the pores if left to obstruct free perspiration.

Water.

Then, aside from cooling and nourishing the skin and the system through the pores, cleanliness and health demand oft and repeated ablutions of the whole body. In order that the perspiration may be unobstructed, it is absolutely necessary to wash the whole surface of the body in water, and on account of the acid and oily substance collecting on the skin, using a small quantity of alkali, as soap or soda in the water, and thus, by good brisk rubbing, using the hand in preference to a cloth or sponge, thoroughly cleansing the little mouths referred to, else their action is retarded and suspended. This should be done daily during the summer season.

This is a simple process, indispensable to health, and the unwashed can hardly believe what beneficial results follow such a plain course, or know the healthful influence or the comfort derived from a frequent use of pure water.

Those who bathe thus daily seldom take colds. During the winter, in cold climates, weekly or semi-weekly bathing may suffice.

“IT COSTS NOTHING.”

A statesman, in seeking an illustration of the difference between price and value, very happily hit upon water, which costs nothing, and yet is of inestimable worth. Water, next to air, is the most indispensable of all the productions of nature. “Unlike most good things providentially supplied for our use, it is hardly capable of abuse. The more common danger to be feared is from too little, not too much, water.

“Simple a thing, however, as it may be to quench the thirst from the running stream, or the mountain spring, there are but few people who know how to drink. Most people, in the eagerness of thirst, swallow with such avidity the welcome draught, that they deluge their stomachs without proportionately refreshing themselves. The slowly sipping of a single goblet of water will do more to alleviate thirst than the sudden gulping down of a gallon. It is more frequently the dryness of the mouth, during hot weather, than the want of the system, which calls for the supply of fluid. When larger quantities, moreover, are poured into the stomach than are required, that organ becomes oppressed mechanically by the distention, and the digestion is consequently weakened.”The prescribed ablutions of the Jews and Mohammedans have not only a spiritual but a hygienic value. “The washing of the body not only whitens the outside of the sepulchre, but purifies the internal organs, and renews the spiritual man as well.... Hence, when the body becomes foul by the retention of worn-out and corrupt material accumulated on the surface and the interior of the structure, it becomes a cage suitable only for the dwelling of unclean birds, and no others will descend and make their nests therein. It is a vessel fitted to receive only the lower passions and feelings of human nature.

“Public bathing-houses are as important a means of grace as our poorly ventilated churches, and many an unhappy soul would be brought nearer to heaven by a judicious application of soap and water than he could be by listening to a sermon about that of which he comprehends little and cares less.”—Rev. W. F. Evans’s “Mental Cure.”

Soap vs. Wrinkles.

How much younger and fresher the wayworn traveller or the outdoor laborer looks after a thorough washing of the face and hands only. Many who complain of “bird’s claws” and wrinkles might murmur less if they made a thorough use of warm water and “old brown windsor soap,” or better, the true castile soap. Nearly all the soap sold at groceries for castile is spurious. A good druggist will have the desired article, and for rough, chapped skin nothing is better, not even glycerine.

Then wash out the furrows of fine dirt that gather in the little wrinkles, and it will surprise some folks to see how, thereby, they have reduced the size of their wrinkles. It is like cleansing an old coat!

God’s Sunshine.

Next to air and water in importance to health and happiness is sunlight. O, “let there be light” in your houses, that there may be light in your hearts also!

Our houses should be so constructed and located that the sun may shine into every room some time during the day. Too many build houses and live in the rear. The hall and large parlors are usually situated in front, to the south or west, throwing the sitting, dining, and working-room—kitchen—in the shade. Let the cheering, life-giving influences of God’s dear blessed sunshine flood the working, sitting, and, particularly, the sleeping rooms. He or she who sleeps in a room from which the sunshine is totally excluded will be pale, weak, tired, and die prematurely of consumption. Try a plant in such a room. It soon turns pale and sickly. Just so your children and yourself. I have such patients daily. Medicine cannot substitute sunshine.

Throw open the blinds, dash aside the curtains, and let in the light and sunshine to your homes and hearts. Never mind the carpets; they may be replaced, but you and your children, never! Save your health, if you ruin an old carpet in so doing!

Cholera, dysentery, scrofula, nervous diseases, and consumption prevail more extensively in narrow and darkened, as also in the shady side of streets; also in darkened prisons and hospitals.

A heavy heart walks in dark and cheerless apartments. The cheerful, happy man, the joyous, contented wife, the beautiful, healthy children, dwell and rejoice in homes where flows full and free the pure air and the life-keeping, health-giving sunshine.

Christianity is more likely to take up its abode with the latter. There only green leaves and beautiful flowers can gladden the sight and exhilarate the senses.

Air, water, sunlight! “These three.” Don’t neglect them. So shall you live long, live healthy, and at last die happily!

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