Now you are ready to wash and dress. You can easily take off the gown,
or garments, that you have worn during the night; but there is one
coat that you cannot take off--one that is more important and useful
and beautiful than all the rest of your clothes put together, no
matter of how fine material they may be made, or what they have cost.
Do you remember the old Bible story about Joseph and his "coat of many
colors"? Perhaps you've wished you had one just as nice. Now, the fact
is, your coat is more beautiful even than Joseph's; and, as for its
uses, it is the most wonderful coat ever made!
This coat of yours changes its color from time to time; sometimes it
is pink, sometimes red, sometimes a soft milky white, and sometimes a
dull dark blue, or purple. I wonder if you guess what it is. Sometimes
it is dry and sometimes wet, sometimes it is hot and sometimes cold,
sometimes rough and sometimes smoother than the softest silk--just run
your hand gently over your cheek!
Now you have guessed my riddle. This "wonderful coat" is your skin,
which covers you from top to toe. It fits more closely than any glove,
and yet is so easy and comfortable that it never rubs or binds or
hurts you in any way.
[Illustration: THE SKIN-STRAINER
The little pores open in furrows of the skin. This drawing is
many hundred times as large as the piece of skin itself.]
Will the wonderful coat wash? Yes, indeed, and look all the prettier.
In fact, to keep it white and clear you must bathe often, not only
your hands and face, but your whole body. Your skin is a strainer, you
know. It is a "way out" for some of the gases and waste water from the
blood. What will happen, then, if you don't wash your skin? The little
holes, or _pores_, that the sweat comes through may become clogged.
The strainer won't let the poison out, and so it will stay inside your
body. Then, too, if you do not wash the skin, the little scales that
are peeling off the outside coat will not be cleared away. You have
noticed them, haven't you, sometime when you were pulling off black
stockings? You found little white pieces, almost as fine as powder,
clinging to the inside of the stockings. These little scales are
always rubbing off from your skin.
So every morning it is good to splash the cool water all over
yourself, if you can, as the birds do in the puddles. You don't need a
bathtub for this, though of course it is much pleasanter and more
convenient if you have one. Pour the water into a basin and splash it
with your hands all over your face, neck, chest, and arms. Then rub
your skin well with a rough towel. Next, place the basin on the floor;
put your feet into it and dash the water as quickly as you can over
your legs. Then take another good rub. But you must not do this unless
you keep warm while you are doing it, and your skin must be pink when
you have finished. If you are chilly after rubbing, you should use
tepid, even very hot, water for your morning bath. In summer you can
bathe all over easily; but in winter, unless your room is warm, it is
enough to splash the upper half of your body. Once or twice a week you
should take a good hot bath with soap and then sponge down in cool
water. See how the birds enjoy their bath; and you will, too, if you
once get into the habit of bathing regularly.
Now let us take a good look at this coat and see if we can find out
what it is like.
The other day I saw some boys playing basketball. They wore short
sleeves and short trousers. Four were Indians, and five were white
boys, and one was a negro. The skin of the white boys seemed to shine,
it looked so white; and the negro's shone in its blackness; but the
Indian's looked a dull rich dusky brown.
Yes, you say, they belong to different races.
But what causes the difference in their color?
Little specks of coloring matter, or _pigment_, which lie in the outer
layer of the skin. Even white skins contain a little pigment, they are
not a pure white. A Chinaman's skin has a little more of this pigment,
so that it looks yellow; an Indian's has still more; and a negro's has
most of all, making him black.
Sunlight can increase the amount of pigment in the skin. The people
who live in the torrid zone have much darker skins than those who live
where the days are short and cold. You have noticed, yourself, that
when you expose the skin of your face or arms to the hot sun, you
become freckled, or tanned. This tanning, or browning, of the outer
layer of the skin protects the more delicate coats of skin below from
being scorched or injured by the strong light.
When you are playing and running with your schoolmates, you see that
their faces grow very red, and even their hands. Why is this? Because
the heart has been pumping hard and has sent the red blood out toward
the skin. The red color shines through the outer part of the skin. The
pigment in the Indian's skin, or the negro's, prevents the red blood
underneath from shining through, as it does through yours.
[Illustration: THE PARTS OF THE SKIN
The pore P on the surface of the skin is the end of a tube
through which sweat flows out. At O are the oil sacs that feed
the hair H. At B are the little blood vessels that make the skin
look pink.]
The skin, you see, is made up of different layers. When you burn
yourself, you can see a layer of skin stand out like a blister. It is
white; but if the blister is broken, underneath you see the coat that
is full of tiny blood vessels, so tiny and so close together that this
whole coat looks red. The skin, like every other part of the body, is
made up of tiny animal cells. In the outer coat they become quite flat
like little scales and then wear off; and their places are taken by
the newer cells that are growing from beneath. The skin grows from
beneath, and bit by bit it sheds its old outer coat. This is how it
keeps itself nice and new on the outside and "grows away" the marks of
cuts and burns.
Now hold up your hand and look across it toward the light. What do you
see? It looks fuzzy, doesn't it? Ever and ever so many tiny little
hairs are on it. The other day a little boy asked me what made his
skin look so rough? I looked, and saw that all the little hairs were
standing on end, so that his skin looked like "goose-flesh." It was
because he was cold. The muscles at the roots of the hairs had
shortened, so that they pulled the hairs straight up and made the skin
look rough.
What part of the body has a great deal of hair on it? The head, of
course. Isn't it strange that you have such long hair on the top of
your head and none at all on the soles of your feet or the palms of
your hands? The hair on your head protects you from cold and rain and
the hot sun; but hair on your palms, would only be in the way.
Now look at the ends of your fingers. There the skin has grown so hard
that it forms _nails_. If you look at your toes, you will see that the
same thing has happened there. These nails are little pink shells to
protect the ends of your fingers and toes. You see what a wonderful
coat it is that you are wearing.
Does the skin coat keep you warm? Yes, and not only that, but it keeps
you cool, too. You have often seen little drops of water on your skin,
when you were very hot. This sweat, or perspiration, as we call it,
cools the body by making the skin moist. You know how cold it makes
you to be wrapped in a wet sheet. Well, the skin cools you in just the
same way, when it becomes wet with sweat. The sweat comes from the
blood under the skin; so that, as we saw before, by letting this
moisture pass through, the skin acts as a sieve to let out the waste
from the blood.
Then, too, the skin covers and protects all the other parts. It is
thin where it needs to be thin, so as not to interfere with quick
movements, as on the eyelids and the lips; and thick where it needs to
be thick, to stand wear and tear, as on the soles of the feet and the
palms of the hands. I remember once taking a sliver of shingle out of
the back of a little boy who had been sliding down a roof. I had to
sharpen my knife and press and push and at last get a pair of scissors
to cut out the sliver. It was just like cutting tough leather. But
even if we do sometimes get cuts and burns and bruises, yet our skin
coat protects us far more than we really think. It keeps out all sorts
of poisons and the germs of blood-poisoning and such diseases. These
enemies can attack us only through a scratch or cut in the skin, for
that is the only way they can get into the blood. The skin is better
than any manufactured coat, too, because, if it is torn or scratched,
it can mend itself.
[Illustration: READING BY TOUCH INSTEAD OF SIGHT
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: DO YOUR NAILS LOOK LIKE THESE?]
Just as your nails are a part of your skin,--hardened from it and
rooted in it,--so, too, are your teeth; and, like the rest of the
skin, they should be kept thoroughly clean. Every morning and evening
at least they should be carefully brushed. If you take good care of
your first teeth and have them filled when they need it, you will
probably have good permanent teeth, and you won't have to suffer with
toothache.
The skin of your head, which grows such beautiful hair, and the hair
itself, should be kept clean. There are two things needed for this.
First, the hair should be brushed and combed night and morning. The
skin of your scalp is shedding tiny thin scales all day and all night,
just as the rest of your skin is doing. Fortunately, your hair is
growing from roots under the skin much in the same way as blades of
grass grow from their roots; and, as it grows, it pushes up these
scales from the surface of the scalp to where you can readily reach
them with a good bristle brush. If they are not well brushed out, the
dust and smoke from the air will mix with them, and the germs in the
dust and smoke will breed in the mixture, and you will soon have
"scurf" or _dandruff_ on your head. So give at least fifteen or twenty
strokes with the brush before you use the comb. It isn't necessary to
brush or scrape the scalp, and a comb should be used only to part the
hair or take out the tangles.
The second thing is to wash the hair and the scalp. Boys ought to wash
their hair every week; and girls, every two weeks; and girls,
especially, should be careful to dry their hair very thoroughly
afterwards. You will notice after washing your hair that it feels dry
and fluffy, and sometimes rather harsh. This is because the soap and
hot water together have washed out of the hair its natural oil, or
grease, which kept it bright and soft; and this is why it is better
not to wash the hair with soap and hot water oftener than once a week
or so. But it shouldn't be shirked when the time does come. Watch how
hard your kitten works to keep her fur coat glossy, though it must be
tiresome enough to lick, lick, lick.
Sometimes in cold weather your lips and knuckles crack and bleed. That
is because the skin on those parts is so thin and so often stretched
and bruised. If you will take a little pure olive oil or cold cream
and rub it on your lips and hands, it will make the skin softer and
not so likely to break.
[Illustration: SHOES THAT SHOW SENSE