A mild summer day, and one, two, three, four children sitting on the ground by the pond, and feeding the ducks!

But I think I hear the larger girl, who is standing up, say to the sitters, "Children, don't you know better than to sit there on the damp earth? You will every one of you catch a cold. Get up this instant."

That is what the larger girl ought to say; for many children take bad colds by sitting on the grass. The other day, as I went through the Central Park in New York, I saw a maid in charge of three children, one of them an infant, and she was letting them lie at full-length on the grass.

I told her she must not do so; but she said the weather was warm, and there was no danger. As I knew the parents of the children, I told her she must take the children up at once, and let them sit on the seats near by.

At length she obeyed me. Two days afterwards I called on the parents of the children, and then learned that every one of the little ones was ill with a cold. I told the mother what I had seen at the Central Park and she told the maid that never again must she let the children sit on the bare grass. The maid promised she would not do so again.