If there is anything that we all enjoy, it is waking up on a bright spring morning and seeing the sunlight pouring into the room. You all know the poem beginning,—

You are feeling fresh and rested and happy after your good night’s sleep and you are eager to be up and out among the birds and the flowers.

You are perfectly right in being glad to say “Good morning” to the sun, for he is one of the best friends you have. Doesn’t he make the flowers blossom, and the trees grow? And he makes the apples redden, too, and the wheat-ears fill out, and the potatoes grow under the ground, and the peas and beans and melons and strawberries and raspberries above it. All these things that feed you and keep you healthy are grown by the heat of the sun. So if it were not for the sunlight we should all starve to death.

While sunlight is pouring down from the sun to the earth, it is warming and cleaning the air, burning up any poisonous gases, or germs, that may be in it. By heating the air, it starts it to rising. If you will watch, you can see the air shimmering and rising from an open field on a broiling summer day, or wavering and rushing upward from a hot stove or an open register in winter. Hold a little feather fluff or blow a puff of flour above a hot stove, and it will go sailing up toward the ceiling. As the heated air rises, the cooler air around rushes in to fill the place that it has left, and the outdoor “drafts” are made that we call winds.

These winds keep the air moving about in all directions constantly, like water in a boiling pot, and in this way keep it fresh and pure and clean. If it were not for this, the air would become foul and damp and stagnant, like the water in a ditch or marshy pool. So the Sun God, as our ancestors in the Far East used to call him thousands of years ago, not only gives us our food to eat, but keeps the air fit for us to breathe.In still another way the sun is one of our best friends; for his rays have the wonderful power, not only of causing plants that supply us with food—the Green Plants, as we call them—to grow and flourish, but at the same time of withering and killing certain plants that do us harm. These plants—the Colorless Plants, we may call them—are the molds, the fungi, and the bacteria, or germs. You know how a pair of boots put away in a dark, damp closet, or left down in the cellar, will become covered all over with a coating of gray mold. Mold grows rapidly in the dark. Just so, these other Colorless Plants, which include most of our disease germs, grow and flourish in the dark, and are killed by sunlight. That is why no house, or room, is fit to live in, into which the sunlight does not pour freely sometime during the day. The more sunlight you can bring into your bedrooms and your playrooms and your schoolrooms, except during the heat of the day in the summer time, the better they will be. The Italians have a very shrewd and true old proverb about houses and light: “Where the sunlight never comes, the doctor often does.”

So you see that Nature is guiding you in the right direction when she makes you love and delight in the bright, warm, golden sunlight; for it is one of the very best friends that you have—indeed, you couldn’t possibly live without it.

In one sense, in fact, though this may be a little harder for you to understand, you are sunlight yourselves; for the power in your muscles and nerves that makes you able to jump and dance and sing and laugh and breathe is the sunlight which you have eaten in bread and apples and potatoes, and which the plants had drunk in through their leaves in the long, sunny days of spring and summer.

So throw up your blinds and open your windows wide to the sunlight every morning; and let the sunlight pour in all day long, except only while you are reading or studying—when the dazzling light may hurt your eyes—and for six or seven of the hottest hours of the day in summer time. Perhaps your mothers will object that the sunlight will fade the carpets, or spoil the furniture; but it will put far more color into your faces than it will take out of the carpets. If you are given the choice of a bedroom, choose a room that faces south or southeast or southwest, never toward the north.

II. A GOOD START

When you are really awake and have had a good look to see what kind of morning it is, you will feel like yawning and stretching, and rubbing your eyes four or five times, before you jump out of bed; and it is a good plan to take plenty of time to do this, unless you are already late for breakfast or school. It starts your heart to beating and your lungs to breathing faster; and it limbers your muscles, so that you are ready for the harder work they must do as soon as you jump out of bed and begin to walk about and bathe and dress and run and play.

When you jump out of bed, throw back the covers and turn them over the foot of the bed, so that the air and the sunlight can get at every part of them and make them clean and fresh and sweet to cover you at night again. Though you may not know it, all night long, while you have been asleep, your skin has been at work cleaning and purifying your blood, pouring out gases and a watery vapor that we call perspiration, or sweat; and these impurities have been caught by the sheets and blankets. So after a bed has been slept in for four or five nights, if it has not been thrown well open in the morning, it begins to have a stuffy, foul, sourish smell. You can see from this why it is a bad thing to sleep with your head under the bedclothes, as people sometimes do, or even to pull the blankets up over your head, because you are frightened at something or are afraid that your ears will get cold. Your breath has poisonous gases in it, as well as your perspiration; and the two together make the air under the bedclothes very bad.

Now you are ready to wash and dress. But before you do this, it is a good thing to take off your nightdress, or turn it down to your waist and tie it there with the sleeves, and go through some good swinging and “windmill” movements with your arms and shoulders and back.

(1) Swing your arms round and round like the sails of a windmill; first both together, then one in one direction, and the other in the other.

(2) Hold your arms straight out in front of you, and swing them backward until the backs of your hands strike behind your back.

(3) Hold your arms straight out on each side, clench your fists, and then smartly bend your elbows so that you almost strike yourself on both shoulders, and repeat quickly twenty or thirty times.(4) Swing your arms, out full length, across your chest five or ten times.

(5) Swing forward and down with your arms stretched out, until the tips of your fingers touch the floor.

(6) Set your feet a little apart, swing forward and downward again, until your hands swing back between your ankles.

When you come back from these down-swings, bend just as far back as you can without losing your balance, so that you put all the muscles along the front of your body on the stretch; and then swing down again between your ankles. This will help to tone up all your muscles, and limber all your joints, and set your blood to circulating well, and give you a good start for the day.

III. BATHING AND BRUSHING

Now you are ready to wash and dress. You can easily take off the gown, or garments, that you have worn during the night; but there is one coat that you cannot take off—one that is more important and useful and beautiful than all the rest of your clothes put together, no matter of how fine material they may be made, or what they have cost.

Do you remember the old Bible story about Joseph and his “coat of many colors”? Perhaps you’ve wished you had one just as nice. Now, the fact is, your coat is more beautiful even than Joseph’s; and, as for its uses, it is the most wonderful coat ever made!

This coat of yours changes its color from time to time; sometimes it is pink, sometimes red, sometimes a soft milky white, and sometimes a dull dark blue, or purple. I wonder if you guess what it is. Sometimes it is dry and sometimes wet, sometimes it is hot and sometimes cold, sometimes rough and sometimes smoother than the softest silk—just run your hand gently over your cheek!

Now you have guessed my riddle. This “wonderful coat” is your skin, which covers you from top to toe. It fits more closely than any glove, and yet is so easy and comfortable that it never rubs or binds or hurts you in any way.

Will the wonderful coat wash? Yes, indeed, and look all the prettier. In fact, to keep it white and clear you must bathe often, not only your hands and face, but your whole body. Your skin is a strainer, you know. It is a “way out” for some of the gases and waste water from the blood. What will happen, then, if you don’t wash your skin? The little holes, or pores, that the sweat comes through may become clogged. The strainer won’t let the poison out, and so it will stay inside your body. Then, too, if you do not wash the skin, the little scales that are peeling off the outside coat will not be cleared away. You have noticed them, haven’t you, sometime when you were pulling off black stockings? You found little white pieces, almost as fine as powder, clinging to the inside of the stockings. These little scales are always rubbing off from your skin.So every morning it is good to splash the cool water all over yourself, if you can, as the birds do in the puddles. You don’t need a bathtub for this, though of course it is much pleasanter and more convenient if you have one. Pour the water into a basin and splash it with your hands all over your face, neck, chest, and arms. Then rub your skin well with a rough towel. Next, place the basin on the floor; put your feet into it and dash the water as quickly as you can over your legs. Then take another good rub. But you must not do this unless you keep warm while you are doing it, and your skin must be pink when you have finished. If you are chilly after rubbing, you should use tepid, even very hot, water for your morning bath. In summer you can bathe all over easily; but in winter, unless your room is warm, it is enough to splash the upper half of your body. Once or twice a week you should take a good hot bath with soap and then sponge down in cool water. See how the birds enjoy their bath; and you will, too, if you once get into the habit of bathing regularly.

Now let us take a good look at this coat and see if we can find out what it is like.

The other day I saw some boys playing basketball. They wore short sleeves and short trousers. Four were Indians, and five were white boys, and one was a negro. The skin of the white boys seemed to shine, it looked so white; and the negro’s shone in its blackness; but the Indian’s looked a dull rich dusky brown.

Yes, you say, they belong to different races.

But what causes the difference in their color?

Little specks of coloring matter, or pigment, which lie in the outer layer of the skin. Even white skins contain a little pigment, they are not a pure white. A Chinaman’s skin has a little more of this pigment, so that it looks yellow; an Indian’s has still more; and a negro’s has most of all, making him black.

Sunlight can increase the amount of pigment in the skin. The people who live in the torrid zone have much darker skins than those who live where the days are short and cold. You have noticed, yourself, that when you expose the skin of your face or arms to the hot sun, you become freckled, or tanned. This tanning, or browning, of the outer layer of the skin protects the more delicate coats of skin below from being scorched or injured by the strong light.

When you are playing and running with your schoolmates, you see that their faces grow very red, and even their hands. Why is this? Because the heart has been pumping hard and has sent the red blood out toward the skin. The red color shines through the outer part of the skin. The pigment in the Indian’s skin, or the negro’s, prevents the red blood underneath from shining through, as it does through yours.

The skin, you see, is made up of different layers. When you burn yourself, you can see a layer of skin stand out like a blister. It is white; but if the blister is broken, underneath you see the coat that is full of tiny blood vessels, so tiny and so close together that this whole coat looks red. The skin, like every other part of the body, is made up of tiny animal cells. In the outer coat they become quite flat like little scales and then wear off; and their places are taken by the newer cells that are growing from beneath. The skin grows from beneath, and bit by bit it sheds its old outer coat. This is how it keeps itself nice and new on the outside and “grows away” the marks of cuts and burns.

Now hold up your hand and look across it toward the light. What do you see? It looks fuzzy, doesn’t it? Ever and ever so many tiny little hairs are on it. The other day a little boy asked me what made his skin look so rough? I looked, and saw that all the little hairs were standing on end, so that his skin looked like “goose-flesh.” It was because he was cold. The muscles at the roots of the hairs had shortened, so that they pulled the hairs straight up and made the skin look rough.

What part of the body has a great deal of hair on it? The head, of course. Isn’t it strange that you have such long hair on the top of your head and none at all on the soles of your feet or the palms of your hands? The hair on your head protects you from cold and rain and the hot sun; but hair on your palms, would only be in the way.

Now look at the ends of your fingers. There the skin has grown so hard that it forms nails. If you look at your toes, you will see that the same thing has happened there. These nails are little pink shells to protect the ends of your fingers and toes. You see what a wonderful coat it is that you are wearing.Does the skin coat keep you warm? Yes, and not only that, but it keeps you cool, too. You have often seen little drops of water on your skin, when you were very hot. This sweat, or perspiration, as we call it, cools the body by making the skin moist. You know how cold it makes you to be wrapped in a wet sheet. Well, the skin cools you in just the same way, when it becomes wet with sweat. The sweat comes from the blood under the skin; so that, as we saw before, by letting this moisture pass through, the skin acts as a sieve to let out the waste from the blood.

Then, too, the skin covers and protects all the other parts. It is thin where it needs to be thin, so as not to interfere with quick movements, as on the eyelids and the lips; and thick where it needs to be thick, to stand wear and tear, as on the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. I remember once taking a sliver of shingle out of the back of a little boy who had been sliding down a roof. I had to sharpen my knife and press and push and at last get a pair of scissors to cut out the sliver. It was just like cutting tough leather. But even if we do sometimes get cuts and burns and bruises, yet our skin coat protects us far more than we really think. It keeps out all sorts of poisons and the germs of blood-poisoning and such diseases. These enemies can attack us only through a scratch or cut in the skin, for that is the only way they can get into the blood. The skin is better than any manufactured coat, too, because, if it is torn or scratched, it can mend itself.

Does your skin ever talk to you? No, of course not; yet it tells you ever so many things. Shut your eyes and pick up a pencil. As you touch it, your skin tells you that it is round and smooth, and pointed at one end. You can feel the soft rubber on the other end, too. Is it wet? No. Is it hot? Of course not. Now place a book in the palm of your hand. Is it flat or round, light or heavy, rough or smooth? All these things your skin tells you through little nerve tips, which are scattered thickly all over it. Still another thing the skin does; if you touch anything sharp or hot, it says at once that it hurts. If your clothes are tight or uncomfortable, the skin soon lets you know. You see it is always on the lookout, always ready to tell you about the things around you and to warn you against the things that might hurt you. The fifth of your “Five Senses,” the sense of touch, is in your skin.

There are some parts of your skin-coat that should have special care.

I hardly need tell you about washing your face carefully around your nose and in front of your ears. Sometimes I have seen a “high-water mark” right down the middle of the cheek or just under the jaws or chin.

Of course your mother has told you about washing your hands! You see, our hands touch so many dirty things, and handle so many things that other people’s hands have touched, that we ought always to wash them before a meal for fear some of the dirt or germs on them may get into our mouths and cause disease.

And we really need to clean our nails as often as we wash our hands, for that little black rim under the nail is very dangerous. Dust and disease germs and dirt of all kinds find it a good place in which to hide. Trim your nails with a file, not a knife; and clean them with a dull cleaner, for a sharp-pointed one will scrape the nail and roughen it, or push the nail away from the skin of the finger underneath.

Trim and clean the edges of your nails carefully and thoroughly, but don’t fuss much with the roots of them. That little fold of skin there may strike you as untidy, but it covers the soft growing part of the nail; and if you push it back with a nail-cleaner, it may cause the nail to crack and roughen or become inflamed and start a “hang nail” or “run around.” If you push it back at all, do so only with the ball of your thumb or finger.

The edges of the nails should be trimmed in a curve to match the curve of the end of the finger. Of course you know that you should never bite your nails, not only because it is a bad habit and will bring a good deal of dirt into your mouth, but because you may bite, or tear down into, the tender growing part of the nail, sometimes called the quick; and then this part may become inflamed, and you will have a troublesome sore on the end of your finger.

Just as your nails are a part of your skin,—hardened from it and rooted in it,—so, too, are your teeth; and, like the rest of the skin, they should be kept thoroughly clean. Every morning and evening at least they should be carefully brushed. If you take good care of your first teeth and have them filled when they need it, you will probably have good permanent teeth, and you won’t have to suffer with toothache.

The skin of your head, which grows such beautiful hair, and the hair itself, should be kept clean. There are two things needed for this.

First, the hair should be brushed and combed night and morning. The skin of your scalp is shedding tiny thin scales all day and all night, just as the rest of your skin is doing. Fortunately, your hair is growing from roots under the skin much in the same way as blades of grass grow from their roots; and, as it grows, it pushes up these scales from the surface of the scalp to where you can readily reach them with a good bristle brush. If they are not well brushed out, the dust and smoke from the air will mix with them, and the germs in the dust and smoke will breed in the mixture, and you will soon have “scurf” or dandruff on your head. So give at least fifteen or twenty strokes with the brush before you use the comb. It isn’t necessary to brush or scrape the scalp, and a comb should be used only to part the hair or take out the tangles.

The second thing is to wash the hair and the scalp. Boys ought to wash their hair every week; and girls, every two weeks; and girls, especially, should be careful to dry their hair very thoroughly afterwards. You will notice after washing your hair that it feels dry and fluffy, and sometimes rather harsh. This is because the soap and hot water together have washed out of the hair its natural oil, or grease, which kept it bright and soft; and this is why it is better not to wash the hair with soap and hot water oftener than once a week or so. But it shouldn’t be shirked when the time does come. Watch how hard your kitten works to keep her fur coat glossy, though it must be tiresome enough to lick, lick, lick.

Sometimes in cold weather your lips and knuckles crack and bleed. That is because the skin on those parts is so thin and so often stretched and bruised. If you will take a little pure olive oil or cold cream and rub it on your lips and hands, it will make the skin softer and not so likely to break.

Sometimes your feet tell you that they need better care. Perhaps your shoes are too tight, or too loose and rub your toes. Soon the skin becomes very hard in one spot, and you have a “corn” on your toe. You must be very, very careful how your shoes and stockings fit. If you should find a corn, or the beginning of one, you had better tell your mother about it, and let her see that your stockings are not too big, so that they wrinkle into folds and chafe, or that your shoes are mended, or that you have a larger pair. And then, if you wash your feet in cold water every day, and put some vaseline or sweet oil on the hard spot night or morning, the corn will probably go away.

Not only your shoes, but all of your clothing must be comfortable if your skin and the parts under it are to do their work well. Your clothes as well as your skin must be washed often, because the sweat, which is oily and greasy as well as watery, soaks into them, and the little white scales cling to them, and often dust and disease germs, too.

One winter a little boy came to my school. The other children told me they did not like to sit by him, his clothes had such an unpleasant smell. I talked to him about it, and what do you suppose he said! “Why, I can’t bathe; the creek’s too cold in winter.” He was waiting till summer time to take a bath! No wonder the other children did not like to sit near him.

Yet, with all the bathing and rubbing and brushing, your skin won’t be clean and beautiful and able to do all that it has to do, unless your stomach and heart and lungs are in good working order. So you must eat good food, sleep ten or twelve hours a day, and play out of doors a great deal, if you expect your skin to be healthy.