The ancients—who are so called because when they lived this old world was young—had a wise saying about a sound mind in a sound body, which fathers and mothers in these days seem to have quite forgotten, if they ever heard it. Else how does it happen that Alice and Fanny, who never have the least appetite in the morning, are permitted to go to school, after a very slender breakfast, with a few cents in their pockets to buy lunch; and that Walter and Howard, with their heads full of other declensions, decline to take even so much as a sandwich, on the plea that they have no time to eat at noon?
DISPOSING OF THE CANDY.
Growing boys and girls need to eat if they are to be rosy, plump, and strong. Yet we can not blame children for disliking the usual school luncheon, which is seldom dainty-looking or inviting to the taste; sandwiches roughly and thickly cut, the bread clumsily buttered, and the meat in chunks instead of slices, cake crumbling and soggy, pickles, and pie that has been wedged into a dinner box for hours, are none of them the proper food for exhausted brains.
Of course, where it is possible, a run home between the morning and afternoon sessions of school, and a nice luncheon at the prettily set home table, with mamma smiling at the head, are the very best things to keep children well. Many reasons combine to make this arrangement very inconvenient, however, for most schools. The necessary prompt re-assembling after the noon recess would be out of the question where pupils live, as they frequently do, several miles distant from the school building.
LUNCH-HOUR IN AN INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL.
How would you like the idea of a school restaurant of your own, little folks? On the bill of fare we would have every day nice hot soup, good home-made bread, both white and brown, baked potatoes, apple sauce, rice pudding, crisp celery, cold ham, and ripe fruit, served at the order of the pupil-diner, at a daily cost of a few cents. We think there are clever women who could manage such an enterprise so that it would pay them very fair profits, and we are sure that if mammas and papas were consulted, they would consider it an economy to have their children well fed every day. It would save an immense amount in doctors' bills to some households.
That wonderful machine, the human body, is not unlike a stove, in which the fire will not keep on burning cheerily unless it is replenished from time to time with fuel. Now the very worst fuel in the world for the human stove is composed of pickles on the one hand, and creams and confections on the other. If the brain is to perform its high offices as it ought, the stomach must receive due attention.
After a comfortable luncheon at the school restaurant, we should advise the boys and girls to petition for a half-hour of merry play out-of-doors in pleasant weather. Snow-balling, coasting, and skating would not be amiss, for after the rapid exercise the mind would return to study not jaded and tired, but fresh and vigorous. In stormy weather a dance or a half-hour of calisthenics would set the blood to merry motion in the veins, and we would not see children coming home from school at four irritable and cross, or so often hear the family doctor say, "You must take that child from school."