These boys are blind; their books are printed with raised letters, which they read by feeling of them.
Does your skin ever talk to you? No, of course not; yet it tells you ever so many things. Shut your eyes and pick up a pencil. As you touch it, your skin tells you that it is round and smooth, and pointed at one end. You can feel the soft rubber on the other end, too. Is it wet? No. Is it hot? Of course not. Now place a book in the palm of your hand. Is it flat or round, light or heavy, rough or smooth? All these things your skin tells you through little nerve tips, which are scattered thickly all over it. Still another thing the skin does; if you touch anything sharp or hot, it says at once that it hurts. If your clothes are tight or uncomfortable, the skin soon lets you know. You see it is always on the lookout, always ready to tell you about the things around you and to warn you against the things that might hurt you. The fifth of your “Five Senses,” the sense of touch, is in your skin.
There are some parts of your skin-coat that should have special care.
I hardly need tell you about washing your face carefully around your nose and in front of your ears. Sometimes I have seen a “high-water mark” right down the middle of the cheek or just under the jaws or chin.
Of course your mother has told you about washing your hands! You see, our hands touch so many dirty things, and handle so many things that other people’s hands have touched, that we ought always to wash them before a meal for fear some of the dirt or germs on them may get into our mouths and cause disease.
And we really need to clean our nails as often as we wash our hands, for that little black rim under the nail is very dangerous. Dust and disease germs and dirt of all kinds find it a good place in which to hide. Trim your nails with a file, not a knife; and clean them with a dull cleaner, for a sharp-pointed one will scrape the nail and roughen it, or push the nail away from the skin of the finger underneath.
USEFUL TOOLS
Trim and clean the edges of your nails carefully and thoroughly, but don’t fuss much with the roots of them. That little fold of skin there may strike you as untidy, but it covers the soft growing part of the nail; and if you push it back with a nail-cleaner, it may cause the nail to crack and roughen or become inflamed and start a “hang nail” or “run around.” If you push it back at all, do so only with the ball of your thumb or finger.
The edges of the nails should be trimmed in a curve to match the curve of the end of the finger. Of course you know that you should never bite your nails, not only because it is a bad habit and will bring a good deal of dirt into your mouth, but because you may bite, or tear down into, the tender growing part of the nail, sometimes called the quick; and then this part may become inflamed, and you will have a troublesome sore on the end of your finger.