By and by the clock strikes eight or nine, and your mother says,
"Children, time to go to bed!"
Sometimes you will have just come to the interesting point in the
story, and would give anything to go on and finish it. But often you
will be just nodding over your book, or beginning to wonder why the
story is not quite so interesting as it was, or why the lines seem to
be running into one another, and the book inclined to swing up and
bump your nose.
If you have had a lively, busy, happy day, you are quite sleepy enough
to be ready for bed--that is, if you could drop into it with all your
clothes on, without all the bother and fuss of undressing. So you pull
yourself together bravely and answer, "All right, mother," and say
"Good night" to everybody, and upstairs you go.
Of course, you must take off your clothes, because you would find them
most uncomfortable to sleep in. Besides, the little pores all over
your skin have been pouring out perspiration all day long; and a great
deal of this has been caught by your clothes, just as it is caught by
the bedclothes while you sleep.
So it is a good thing to take off your clothes, and let your skin be
well aired and cooled. Don't leave your clothes all in a heap on the
floor just where you happen to shed them, but hang them up over the
back of a chair or on pegs, so that the air can blow through them all
night long and sweeten and clean and dry them. Clothes that are worn
continuously become sour with perspiration, and for this same reason
your mother gives you regularly, once or twice a week, clean underwear
and clean shirts or dresses.
After you have undressed for bed, wash your face and neck and hands;
and if you have a nice warm room or bathroom, take a quick splash, or
sponge bath, all over, before you put on your nightgown. This will
wash away from your skin everything that the perspiration has been
leaving on it all day long, as well as any dust, or dirt, that may
have got on it during the day.
If the room is not warm enough for you to do this, it is a good thing
for you to strip to your waist and then to swing your arms about, much
as you did in the morning, only not quite so long, and to rub your
arms and neck and shoulders all over with your hands. This gives them
an _air bath_, and rubs off any of the little scales of skin that may
be ready to be shed, and gives you a sort of dry wash, which is next
best to a wet one.
Then, when you have put on your nightdress, give your hair a thorough
brushing. This is the best time of the day to do it. Dust, smoke,
soot, and germs have been blowing into your hair all day long, and a
thoroughly good brushing will not only get these out of it before they
have had time to work their way in and lodge on the scalp, but will
keep the hair bright and healthy.
Before you get into bed, give your nails a quick scrub with a nail
brush and hot water and soap, and go over them with a _blunt_-pointed
nail cleaner, cleaning out any dirt that may be under their edges, and
rounding off any ragged or broken points with the file. Once a week or
so, when you take your hot bath, it is a good thing to go over your
toe nails in the same way, trimming them and cleaning them. Remember,
however, not to round off your toe nails at the corners, but to leave
them square, as in this way you will prevent them from ingrowing under
the pressure of your shoes.
There is one thing that you should be very sure of before you get into
bed, and that is that your teeth are as clean as it is possible for
you to make them. If you attended to this also directly after supper,
so much the better; for just as it is important to clean the dishes
and knives and forks that you have been using, so it is important to
thoroughly clean the ivory knives and forks that grow in your mouth.
Talk about being "born with a silver spoon in your mouth"! You were
born with something much prettier and far more valuable.
Even though your teeth make a firm and even line in front and on their
cutting edges, yet there are many little gaps and spaces between their
roots, where bits of food can stick. If these scraps of food are not
thoroughly and carefully removed after each meal, the warmth and
moisture in the mouth makes them begin to decay. The acids from this
decay will be likely not only to upset your stomach and digestion, but
to act upon the glassy coating of your teeth. After a little while,
spots will begin to form on the surface of your teeth; they will lose
their bright, shiny, pearly look; the acids will eat further into the
teeth, and very soon there will be holes, or _cavities_.
Though your teeth are very hard and glassy looking on the surface,
they are much softer and chalkier inside; this glassy coating covers
only the _crown_, or free part, of the tooth, which you can see. It
leaves the softer inside part of the tooth bare just at the edge of
the gums, and particularly between the roots of the teeth, where
little scraps of food lodge and decay. When the acids that are formed
by the decaying food have eaten away a good deal of the inside of the
tooth, the hard, shiny surface is left just like a thin shell; and one
day you happen to bite down upon a piece of bone in your food, or try
to crack a nut with your teeth, and "crack" goes this brittle shell of
your hollow tooth.
[Illustration: HEALTHY GUMS MEAN HEALTHY TEETH
If the gums are not kept clean and healthy, the second teeth
that are getting ready to push out the first teeth will not come
in strong and good, nor will the teeth remain good. This picture
shows how the teeth grow. Notice the gaps between the teeth,
where food may lodge.]
Right in the middle of each tooth is a tiny hollow, or cavity, filled
with a soft, living pulp containing one or two very sensitive nerves;
and when the decay has eaten into the tooth far enough to reach this
nerve pulp, it makes it ache, and then you have _toothache_.
The one and only thing that is necessary in order to avoid all this
decay and breaking away of your teeth, and throbbing toothache, is to
keep the surface of your teeth, and particularly the sides where they
are next one another, clean and smooth and unbroken. And all that is
needed to keep your teeth perfectly clean and smooth is to use your
toothbrush thoroughly after every meal and at bedtime; and then, if
there are any little scraps of food between the teeth that have not
been brushed away, to pick them out gently with a quill toothpick, or
take a piece of silk or linen thread, push it up between the teeth,
and gently saw backward and forward until you have cleaned out the
space between the roots. You should take at least three to five
minutes after every meal and before you go to bed at night to brush
your teeth; and you should brush not only your teeth, but the whole
surface of your gums close up to where they join the lips.
It is almost as important to keep your gums pink and hard and healthy
as it is to keep your teeth clean; and the same thorough brushing will
do both. If the gums are perfectly healthy, they will come well down
over the roots of the teeth, and keep them safely covered right down
to where the glassy outer coating begins, and so leave no gap where
the acids of decay can attack the teeth. Be sure to brush your teeth,
not merely straight backward and forward, but up and down and round
and round as well, both to clean out thoroughly all the grooves and
openings between them and to brush the gums well down over the teeth.
It may seem strange, but one of the best ways to keep your teeth from
growing crooked and irregular is to keep your nose clear and healthy,
so that you can breathe through it freely at all times, both day and
night. Crooked jaws and irregular teeth are more often caused by mouth
breathing than by any other one thing.
You can see why it is best to be careful not to get grit or dirt or
bits of bone in your food, and not to crack nuts or hard candy with
your teeth. If you do, you may crack or scratch the delicate glassy
coating of your teeth. But, on the other hand, it is a good thing to
give the teeth plenty to do, and particularly to eat the crusts of
bread, and some of the tougher parts of meat, and parched corn or
other grains, and to eat celery, apples, and other foods that take a
great deal of chewing. The teeth are like everything else in the
body--they need plenty of vigorous work in order to keep them healthy.
Be very careful, though, to keep out of your mouth anything that might
possibly crack or scratch the glassy coating, such as pins, pennies,
pieces of wire, or slate pencils. It is best not even to try to bite
off threads or pieces of string. There is, of course, another reason
for not putting pencils and pennies and such things into your mouth:
they may have dirt, or germs, on them and infect you with disease or
at least upset your digestion.