Sometimes your feet tell you that they need better care. Perhaps your
shoes are too tight, or too loose and rub your toes. Soon the skin
becomes very hard in one spot, and you have a "corn" on your toe. You
must be very, very careful how your shoes and stockings fit. If you
should find a corn, or the beginning of one, you had better tell your
mother about it, and let her see that your stockings are not too big,
so that they wrinkle into folds and chafe, or that your shoes are
mended, or that you have a larger pair. And then, if you wash your
feet in cold water every day, and put some vaseline or sweet oil on
the hard spot night or morning, the corn will probably go away.
Not only your shoes, but all of your clothing must be comfortable if
your skin and the parts under it are to do their work well. Your
clothes as well as your skin must be washed often, because the sweat,
which is oily and greasy as well as watery, soaks into them, and the
little white scales cling to them, and often dust and disease germs,
too.
One winter a little boy came to my school. The other children told me
they did not like to sit by him, his clothes had such an unpleasant
smell. I talked to him about it, and what do you suppose he said!
"Why, I can't bathe; the creek's too cold in winter." He was waiting
till summer time to take a bath! No wonder the other children did not
like to sit near him.
Yet, with all the bathing and rubbing and brushing, your skin won't be
clean and beautiful and able to do all that it has to do, unless your
stomach and heart and lungs are in good working order. So you must eat
good food, sleep ten or twelve hours a day, and play out of doors a
great deal, if you expect your skin to be healthy.