“WHEAT THAT GREW IN A FARMER’S FIELD.”
Percy: The servants must be the teeth. I didn’t know there were so many.
Amy: And I think the bread we eat doesn’t always find them wearing clean white dresses, either. There is Uncle John; his teeth are all stained with nasty tobacco juice.
Mother: But they should be dressed as I have said, and they need careful brushing and washing every day. They should not be used to crack nuts, for they may get broken. If they are not well cared for, the dresses wear out, and great holes can be seen in them. Sometimes they can be mended, and again they cause the master of the house much trouble, and he is obliged to get some one to take them away, because they give him so much pain.
I was quite surprised at the way these servants treated me, though I suppose they knew best what to do. Some of them cut me in two. Others tore me into pieces and ground me till I thought I was passing through another mill. As I had a chance, I looked around, and then I saw the room I was in had a beautiful arched ceiling of a pale pink color.
There was a large servant behind those dressed in white, and he wore a pink uniform. You should have seen the way he rolled me over and over in that room. The servants in white dresses never stirred from where they were standing, but the one wearing the pink uniform jumped from one side of the room to the other, and seemed to be a very lively fellow. I don’t know what he would have done had he not been fastened to the floor. Sometimes, I am told, he peeps out between the folding doors to see what is going on outside, or to tell what kind of work is being done inside. I have heard that sometimes his dress becomes a dirty yellow or brown, and a man with a wise look comes and asks this servant to step outside a moment, till he can see how his uniform looks.
Helen: How funny to think of our teeth and tongue as our servants!
Mother: But that is what they are. There is another group of servants in this passage, called glands. They have little rooms opening into the passage near the floor, and also in the back part of the room. If you ever visited a cave, you remember the walls were wet, and water was dropping from them. You know the skin on the outside of your body feels dry. Some parts of the body have skin inside, but it is wet instead of dry. It is that way in this hall. That which makes it so is called saliva, and it is the duty of the servants called glands to pour saliva over the food as soon as it comes through the front doors, while the tongue rolls it about, and the teeth grind it.
Elmer: But what good does that do?
Mother: It moistens the food and makes it slippery, so it can pass on to the kitchen. Perhaps you know bread is partly made of starch. Another thing the saliva does is to turn starch into sugar, and this makes less work in the kitchen downstairs, as the cook down there has but little to do with starch.