A window seat, that will also serve as a convenient receptacle for toys, may be made by having the top hinged on a low wooden box, and covering the box with some suitable dark material. Do not make the mistake of giving children a quantity of toys at one time; such a practice has the bad effect of dulling their sense of enjoyment and making them tire easily of their playthings. If fond relations insist upon trying to shower all the dolls and books and drums in town on them for one Christmas or birthday celebration, try putting some of them away and keeping them for rainy days or the trying period of convalescence. Toys which will excite the imagination and leave something to their own ingenuity are to be preferred to those that are complete in themselves. Among the former are paints, brushes and outline pictures, games, dolls with patterns and material for clothing, stone building blocks, which come in different sizes and shapes with designs for building.
Decorate the walls with stencil designs or a few good pictures, which should be chosen with reference to the child's age. Few persons are aware that until a child is three years old he cannot distinguish clearly between green, gray and blue, hence decorations containing these colors are lost upon him, and the reason for his love of red and yellow is apparent. The Perkins pictures, issued by the Prang Educational Company, are justly popular for nursery walls, and photographs of the masterpieces can be purchased quite reasonably. A small bookcase should also be given an honored place in the nursery, for older children, and nothing but books of the very best from a literary standpoint, well printed on good paper and substantially bound, should find their way to its shelves. Cheap toy books from the five and ten cent counters, many of which are poorly bound, grotesquely illustrated and insipid in contents, had better be kept away from the children. I would rather give them one good book a year than an armful of poor ones. Some children do not enjoy being read to, but all of them love a story, and, with a little tact on the part of the mother, it is but a step from the story she tells to the one she reads, and she can easily cultivate a taste for good reading, for, after all, she is the genius that shapes and molds, and without whom the most ideal nursery is but a dreary place. We are told that even the songs she sings to the babe at her breast have an occult influence over its future life. What a power and privilege, then, are hers to guide the little groping hands and watch the unfolding mind; and surely she should spare neither time nor trouble in the accomplishment of such a task!
Practical Home Dietetics
By Minnie Genevieve Morse
II. The Rôle of Diet in Reducing and Increasing Weight
In addition to the natural and proper inclination to make the best of oneself, there is scientific reason in the stout woman's desire to reduce her weight, and the painfully thin woman's wish to take on a few more pounds of flesh; health itself is at its best when the body maintains its normal proportions, without serious loss or gain. Any considerable variation from the normal standard shows a disturbance in the balance of nutrition; either the vital fire is being fed too generously, and the excess of fuel, instead of being turned into heat and energy, is accumulating in the tissues, to be a burden to the organism and, perhaps in time, cause disease, or else the expenditure of force is greater than the supply of fuel, the bodily tissues are drawn upon to aid in feeding the fire, and all the systems of the body suffer from the insufficiency of nourishment. Stout people become increasingly disinclined to either physical or mental exertion; they are apt to suffer from indigestion and constipation, rheumatic troubles and shortness of breath; and, when a condition of actual obesity is reached, a fatty degeneration of one or more of the vital organs is liable. The insufficiently nourished person, on the other hand, is usually anæmic and nervous, the weak and faulty performance of many of the bodily functions testifying to the lack of proper nutrition.
With regard to the matter of physical attractiveness, the advantage of proper proportion between the weight and the height is obvious. The too-thin woman has fewer difficulties to contend with than her too-stout sister, in fulfilling fashion's requirements, for her figure can be modified to a far greater extent by the dressmaker's art. But the face and hands cannot be filled out correspondingly, and the thin woman early takes on lines and wrinkles, usually looking much older than a plumper woman of the same age.
Proper balance between the intake of food and the outgo of energy is thus necessary, both for the maintenance of good health and for the preservation of one's fair share of natural comeliness. The generally-accepted standard of weight in proportion to height which a woman should maintain, in order to fulfil these requirements, is as follows: Five feet one inch, 120 pounds; five feet two inches, 126 pounds; five feet three inches, 133 pounds; five feet four inches, 136 pounds; five feet five inches, 142 pounds; five feet six inches, 145 pounds; five feet seven inches, 149 pounds; five feet eight inches, 155 pounds; five feet nine inches, 162 pounds; five feet ten inches, 169 pounds.
The purposes for which food is taken into the body are two: the rebuilding of the bodily tissues, which are constantly consumed by physical and mental activities, and the production of heat and energy. During the period of growth, the body necessarily demands a large amount of tissue-building material, and it is natural and reasonable that a growing child should have a large appetite, and be ready to eat at all times of day. If, however, a person who has come to maturity continues to eat as heartily as in early life, more food is taken into the body than is required after the growing period is ended, a heavy strain is put upon the organs which remove waste products from the system, and there is likely to be a deposition of fat in the tissues. Another factor in producing these results is the fact that the adult usually leads a far less active life, physically, than the growing child, so that less food is needed for transformation into energy, as well as for the purpose of body-building.
This is even more true now than it was a few generations ago; the higher standard of luxury in the modern manner of life, labor-saving devices of every kind, and improved transportation facilities, which have almost reduced out-door exercise to a matter of country-club athletics, are among the reasons for the present-day lack of physical activity among both men and women. It must not be forgotten, however, that our high-pressure modern life also favors the existence of a class, who, instead of feeding their vital fires too generously, are inadequately nourished; among the contributing factors in this case are improper food, hasty and unattractively served meals, unhygienic ways of living, and the heavy, nervous strain that makes havoc of so many lives, in one way or another.