In a "Children's House" with a long programme there ought to be two meals, a hearty one about noon, and a light one about four in the afternoon.
At the hearty meal, there should be soup, a meat dish, and bread, and, in the case of rich children, also fruits or custard, and butter on the bread.
At the four o'clock meal there should be prepared a light lunch, which from a simple piece of bread can range to buttered bread, and to bread accompanied by a fruit marmalade, chocolate, honey, custard, etc. Crisp crackers, biscuits, and cooked fruits, etc., might also be usefully employed. Very suitably the lunch might consist of bread soaked in milk or an egg à la coque with bread sticks, or else of a simple cup of milk in which is dissolved a spoonful of Mellin's Food. I recommend Mellin's Food very highly, not only in infancy, but also much later on account of its properties of digestibility and nutrition, and on account of its flavour, which is so pleasing to children.
Mellin's Food is a powder prepared from barley and wheat, and containing in a concentrated and pure state the nutritive substances proper to those cereals; the powder is slowly dissolved in hot water in the bottom of the same cup which is to be used for drinking the mixture, and very fresh milk is then poured on top.
The child would take the other two meals in his own home, that is, the morning breakfast and the supper, which latter must be very light for children so that shortly after they may be ready to go to bed. On these meals it would be well to give advice to mothers, urging them to help complete the hygienic work of the "Children's Houses," to the profit of their children.
The morning breakfast for the rich might be milk and chocolate, or milk and extract of malt, with crackers, or, better, with toasted bread spread with butter or honey; for the poor, a cup of fresh milk, with bread.
For the evening meal, a soup is to be advised (children should eat soups twice a day), and an egg à la coque or a cup of milk; or rice soup with a base of milk, and buttered bread, with cooked fruits, etc.
As for the alimentary rations to be calculated, I refer the reader to the special treatises on hygiene: although practically such calculations are of no great utility.
In the "Children's Houses," especially in the case of the poor, I should make extensive use of the vegetable soups and I should have cultivated in the garden plots vegetables which can be used in the diet, in order to have them plucked in their freshness, cooked, and enjoyed. I should try, possibly, to do the same for the fruits, and, by the raising of animals, to have fresh eggs and pure milk. The milking of the goats could be done directly by the larger children, after they had scrupulously washed their hands. Another important educative application which school-refection in the "Children's Houses" has to offer, and which concerns "practical life," consists in the preparing of the table, arranging the table linen, learning its nomenclature, etc. Later, I shall show how this exercise can gradually increase in difficulty and constitute a most important didactic instrument.
It is sufficient to intimate here that it is very important to teach the children to eat with cleanliness, both with respect to themselves and with respect to their surroundings (not to soil the napkins, etc.), and to use the table implements (which, at least, for the little ones, are limited to the spoon, and for the larger children extended to the fork and knife).