tempers, and from mischief. Children love to be active, and they can easily be induced to be useful in one way or another. Try to contrive useful employment for them, and if you cannot secure it any other way, offer some reward for their services. But always try first, to get them to do useful things, for the pleasure of helping others, and of thus doing good. A great deal can be done in this way by trying, and thus you are helping to form habits both of industry and benevolence.
Never allow yourselves to tell young children frightful stories. Sometimes children suffer agonies of fear, from having their imaginations filled with frightful images, that haunt them in the dark, or when they go to bed. When I was very young I was told by a young girl, who did not like to stay by me, that if I cried, or made any noise, the “bull beggars” would come down the chimney and carry me off. And many a night I lay with my head covered up, sweating with fear and distress that I shall never forget. Probably there is no distress of childhood so great as that of fear, and domestics should be very careful not to excite it, and
should be patient and kind to little children when they suffer from it.
Another thing I hope you will avoid, and that is, giving children good things to eat in order to coax or reward them. Remember that every time any thing is put into the stomach, all its muscles begin to work in moving it about, for an hour or two; for the stomach, in digesting food, works as hard as the hands work in kneading bread. The stomach needs time to rest after this effort, and children ought never to eat more than once between meals, and then they ought to have bread, or some other simple food.
Those, therefore, who give them cake, or candy, or nuts, and allow them to keep eating them every time they like, take a course which, unless the stomach is very strong, is sure to weaken and injure it. When children have nuts, apples, candy, or cakes, persuade them to eat them, either at their meals as a part, or else half way between a meal as a luncheon, and do not let them keep nibbling and tasting through several successive hours, thus keeping the stomach all the time labouring, and wearing out its strength.
LETTER XVI.
ON COOKING.
My Friends:
There are plenty of receipt books in this country, that direct as to the kind of ingredients for food, and as to the proper quantities; but no knowledge of receipts can ever make a good cook.