Prof. Youmans, of New-York, says: "It has been demonstrated that

alcoholic drinks prevent the natural changes in the blood, and obstruct

the nutritive and reparative functions." He adds, "Chemical experiments

have demonstrated that the action of alcohol on the digestive fluid

is to destroy its active principle, the _pepsin, thus confirming the

observations of physiologists, that its use gives rise to serious

disorders of the stomach and malignant aberration of the whole economy."

We are now prepared to consider the great principles of science, common

sense, and religion, which should guide every woman who has any kind

of influence or responsibility on this subject. It is allowed by all

medical men that pure water is perfectly healthful and supplies all

the liquid needed by the body; and also that by proper means, which

ordinarily are in the reach of all, water can be made sufficiently

pure.

It is allowed by all that milk, and the juices of fruits, when taken

into the stomach, furnish water that is always pure, and that our bread

and vegetable food also supply it in large quantities. There are besides

a great variety of agreeable and healthful beverages, made from the

juices of fruit, containing no alcohol, and agreeable drinks, such as

milk, cocoa, and chocolate, that contain no stimulating principles,

and which are nourishing and healthful.

As one course, then, is perfectly safe and another involves great

danger, it is wrong and sinful to choose the path of danger. There is

no peril in drinking pure water, milk, the juices of fruits, and

infusions that are nourishing and harmless. But there is great danger

to the young, and to the commonwealth, in patronizing the sale and use

of alcoholic drinks. The religion of Christ, in its distinctive feature,

involves generous self-denial for the good of others, especially for

the weaker members of society. It is on this principle that St. Paul

sets forth his own example, "If meat make my brother to offend, I will

eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to

offend." And again he teaches, "We, then, that are strong ought to

bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves."

This Christian principle also applies to the common drinks of the

family, tea and coffee.

It has been shown that the great end for which Jesus Christ came, and

for which he instituted the family state, is the training of our whole

race to virtue and happiness, with chief reference to an immortal

existence. In this mission, of which woman is chief minister, as before

stated, the distinctive feature is self-sacrifice of the wiser and

stronger members to save and to elevate the weaker ones. The children

and the servants are these weaker members, who by ignorance and want

of habits of self-control are in most danger. It is in this aspect

that we are to consider the expediency of using tea and coffee in a

family.

These drinks are a most extensive cause of much of the nervous debility

and suffering endured by American women; and relinquishing them, would

save an immense amount of such suffering. Moreover, all housekeepers

will allow that they can not regulate these drinks in their kitchens,

where the ignorant use them to excess. There is little probability

that the present generation will make so decided a change in their

habits as to give up these beverages; but the subject is presented

rather in reference to forming the habits of children.

It is a fact that tea and coffee are at first seldom or never agreeable

to children. It is the mixture of milk, sugar, and water, that

reconciles them to a taste, which in this manner gradually becomes

agreeable. Now suppose that those who provide for a family conclude

that it is not _their_ duty to give up entirely the use of stimulating

drinks, may not the case appear different in regard to teaching their

children to love such drinks? Let the matter be regarded thus: The

experiments of physiologists all prove that stimulants are not needful

to health, and that, as the general rule, they tend to debilitate the

constitution. Is it right, then, for a parent to tempt a child to drink

what is not needful, when there is a probability that it will prove, to

some extent, an undermining drain on the constitution? Some

constitutions can bear much less excitement than others; and in every

family of children, there is usually one or more of delicate

organization, and consequently peculiarly exposed to dangers from this

source. It is this child who ordinarily becomes the victim to

stimulating drinks. The tea and coffee which the parents and the

healthier children can use without immediate injury, gradually sap the

energies of the feebler child, who proves either an early victim or

a living martyr to all the sufferings that debilitated nerves inflict.

Can it be right to lead children where all allow that there is some

danger, and where in many cases disease and death are met, when, another

path is known to be perfectly safe?

The impression common in this country, that _warm drinks_, especially in

winter, are more healthful than cold, is not warranted by any

experience, nor by the laws of the physical system. At dinner, cold

drinks are universal, and no one deems them injurious. It is only

at the other two meals that they are supposed to be hurtful.

There is no doubt that _warm_ drinks are healthful, and more agreeable

than cold, at certain times and seasons; but it is equally true that

drinks above blood-heat are not healthful. If a person should bathe in

warm water every day, debility would inevitably follow; for the frequent

application of the stimulus of heat, like all other stimulants,

eventually causes relaxation and weakness. If, therefore, a person is in

the habit of drinking hot drinks twice a day, the teeth, throat, and

stomach are gradually debilitated. This, most probably, is one of the

causes of an early decay of the teeth, which is observed to be much more

common among American ladies, than among those in European countries.

It has been stated to the writer, by an intelligent traveler who had

visited Mexico, that it was rare to meet an individual with even a

tolerable set of teeth, and that almost every grown person he met in

the street had merely remnants of teeth. On inquiry into the customs

of the country, it was found that it was the universal practice to

take their usual beverage at almost the boiling-point; and this

doubtless was the chief cause of the almost entire want of teeth in

that country. In the United States, it can not be doubted that much

evil is done in this way by hot drinks. Most tea-drinkers consider tea

as ruined if it stands until it reaches the healthful temperature for

drink.

The following extract, from Dr. Andrew Combe, presents the opinion of

most intelligent medical men on this subject. [Footnote: The writer

would here remark, in reference to extracts made from various authors,

that, for the sake of abridging, she has often left out parts of a

paragraph, but never so as to modify the meaning of the author. Some

ideas, not connected with the subject in hand, are omitted, but none

are altered.]

"_Water_ is a safe drink for all constitutions, provided it be resorted

to in obedience to the dictates of natural thirst only, and not of

habit. Unless the desire for it is felt, there is no occasion for its

use during a meal."

"The primary effect of all distilled and fermented liquors is to

_stimulate the nervous system and quicken the circulation_. In

infancy and childhood, the circulation is rapid and easily excited; and

the nervous system is strongly acted upon even by the slightest

external impressions. Hence, slight causes of irritation readily excite

febrile and convulsive disorders. In youth, the natural tendency of

the constitution is still to excitement, and consequently, as a general

rule, the stimulus of fermented liquors is injurious."

These remarks show that parents, who find that stimulating drinks are

not injurious to themselves, may mistake in inferring from this that

they will not be injurious to their children.

Dr. Combe continues thus: "In mature age, when digestion is good, and

the system in full vigor, if the mode of life be not too exhausting,

the nervous functions and general circulation are in their best

condition, and require no stimulus for their support. The bodily energy

is then easily sustained by nutritious food and a regular regimen, and

consequently artificial excitement only increases the wasting of the

natural strength."

It may be asked, in this connection, why the stimulus of animal food

is not to be regarded in the same light as that of stimulating drinks.

In reply, a very essential difference may he pointed out. Animal food

furnishes nutriment to the organs which it stimulates, but stimulating

drinks excite the organs to quickened action without affording any

nourishment.

It has been supposed by some that tea and coffee have, at least, a

degree of nourishing power. But it is proved that it is the milk and

sugar, and not the main portion of the drink, which imparts the

nourishment. Tea has not one particle of nourishing properties; and

what little exists in the coffee-berry is lost by roasting it in the

usual mode. All that these articles do, is simply _to stimulate without

nourishing_.

Although there is little hope of banishing these drinks, there is still

a chance that something may be gained in attempts to regulate their

use by the rules of temperance. If, then, a housekeeper can not banish

tea and coffee entirely, she may use her influence to prevent excess,

both by her instructions, and by the power of control committed more

or less to her hands.

It is important for every housekeeper to know that the health of a

family very much depends on the _purity_ of water used for cooking

and drinking. There are three causes of impure and unhealthful water.

One is, the existence in it of vegetable or animal matter, which can

be remedied by filtering through sand and charcoal. Another cause is,

the existence of mineral matter, especially in limestone countries,

producing diseases of the bladder. This is remedied in a measure by

boiling, which secures a deposit of the lime on the vessel used. The

third cause is, the corroding of zinc and lead used in pipes and

reservoirs, producing oxides that are slow poisons. The only remedy

is prevention, by having supply-pipes made of iron, like gas-pipe,

instead of zinc and lead; or the lately invented lead pipe lined with

tin, which metal is not corrosive. The obstacle to this is, that the

trade of the plumbers would be greatly diminished by the use of reliable

pipes. When water must be used from supply-pipes of lead or zinc, it

is well to let the water run some time before drinking it and to use

as little as possible, taking milk instead; and being further satisfied

for inner necessities by the water supplied by fruits and vegetables.

The water in these is always pure. But in using milk as a drink, it

must be remembered that it is also rich food, and that less of other

food must be taken when milk is thus used, or bilious troubles will

result from excess of food.

The use of opium, especially by women, is usually caused at first by

medical prescriptions containing it. All that has been stated as to

the effect of alcohol in the brain is true of opium; while, to break

a habit thus induced is almost hopeless, Every woman who takes or who

administers this drug, is dealing as with poisoned arrows, whose wounds

are without cure.

The use of tobacco in this country, and especially among young boys,

is increasing at a fearful rate. On this subject, we have the unanimous

opinion of all medical men; the following being specimens.

A distinguished medical writer thus states the case: "Every physician

knows that the agreeable sensations that tempt to the use of tobacco

are caused by _nicotine_, which is a rank poison, as much so as

prussic acid or arsenic. When smoked, the poison is absorbed by the

blood of the mouth, and carried to the brain. When chewed, the nicotine

passes to the blood through the mouth and stomach. In both cases, the

whole nervous system is thrown, into abnormal excitement to expel the

poison, and it is this excitement that causes agreeable sensations.

The excitement thus caused is invariably followed by a diminution of

nervous power, in exact proportion to the preceding excitement to expel

the evil from the system."

Few will dispute the general truth and effect of the above statement,

so that the question is one to be settled on the same principle as

applies to the use of alcoholic drinks. Is it, then, according to the

generous principles of Christ's religion, for those who are strong and

able to bear this poison, to tempt the young, the ignorant, and the

weak to a practice not needful to any healthful enjoyment, and which

leads multitudes to disease, and often to vice? For the use of tobacco

tends always to lessen nerve-power, and probably every one out of five

that indulges in its use awakens a morbid craving for increased

stimulus, lessens the power of self-control, diminishes the strength

of the constitution, and sets an example that influences the weak to

the path of danger and of frequent ruin.

The great danger of this age is an increasing, intense worldliness,

and disbelief in the foundation principle of the religion of Christ,

that we are to reap through everlasting ages the consequences of habits

formed in this life. In the light of his word, they only who are truly

wise "shall shine as the firmament, and they that turn many to

righteousness, as the stars, forever and ever."

It is increased _faith_ or _belief_ in the teachings of Christ's

religion, as to the influence of this life upon the _life to come_,

which alone can save our country and the world from that inrushing tide

of sensualism and worldliness, now seeming to threaten the best hopes

and prospects of our race.

And woman, as the chief educator of our race, and the prime minister

of the family state, is bound in the use of meats and drinks to employ

the powerful and distinctive motives of the religion of Christ in

forming habits of temperance and benevolent self-sacrifice for the

good of others.

XI.

CLEANLINESS.

Both the health and comfort of a family depend, to a great extent, on

cleanliness of the person and the family surroundings. True cleanliness

of person involves the scientific treatment of the skin. This is the

most complicated organ of the body, and one through which the health

is affected more than through any other; and no persons can or will

he be so likely to take proper care of it as those by whom its

construction and functions are understood.

[Illustration: Fig. 57.]

Fig. 57 is a very highly magnified portion of the skin. The layer

marked 1 is the outside, very thin skin, called the _cuticle_ or _scarf

skin_. This consists of transparent layers of minute cells, which are

constantly decaying and being renewed, and the white scurf that passes

from the skin to the clothing is a decayed portion of these cells. This

part of the skin has neither nerves nor blood-vessels.

The dark layer, marked 2, 7, 8, is that portion of the true skin which

gives the external color marking diverse races. In the portion of the

dark layer marked 3, 4, is seen a network of nerves which run from two

branches of the nervous trunks coming from the spinal marrow. These

arc nerves of sensation, by which the sense of touch or feeling is

performed. Fig. 58 represents the blood-vessels, (intermingled with

the nerves of the skin,) which divide into minute capillaries that

act like the capillaries of the lungs, taking oxygen from the air, and

giving out carbonic acid. At _a_, and _b_ are seen the roots of two

hairs, which abound in certain parts of the skin, and are nourished by

the blood of the capillaries.

[Illustration: Fig. 58.]

[Illustration: Fig. 59.]

At Fig. 59 is a magnified view of another set of vessels, called the

lymphatics or absorbents. These are extremely minute vessels that

interlace with the nerves and blood-vessels of the skin. Their office

is to aid in collecting the useless, injurious, or decayed matter, and

carry it to certain reservoirs, from which it passes into some of the

large veins, to be thrown out through the lungs, bowels, kidneys, or

skin. These _absorbent_ or _lymphatic_; vessels have mouths opening on

the surface of the true skin, and, though covered by the cuticle, they

can absorb both liquids and solids that are placed in close contact with

the skin. In proof of this, one of the main trunks of the lymphatics in

the hand can be cut off from all communication with other portions, and

tied up: and if the hand is immersed in milk a given time, it will be

found that the milk has been, absorbed through the cuticle and fills the

lymphatics. In this way, long-continued blisters on the skin will

introduce the blistering matter into the blood through the absorbents,

and then the kidneys will take it up from the blood passing through them

to carry it out of the body, and thus become irritated and inflamed by

it.

[Illustration: Fig. 60]

There are also oil-tubes, imbedded in the skin, that draw off oil from

the blood. This issues on the surface and spreads over the cuticle to

keep it soft and moist. But the most curious part of the skin is the

system of innumerable minute perspiration-tubes. Fig. 60 is a drawing

of one very greatly magnified. These tubes open on the cuticle, and

the openings are called pores of the skin. They descend into the true

skin, and there form a coil, as is seen in the drawing. These tubes

are hollow, like a pipe-stem, and their inner surface consists of

wonderfully minute capillaries filled with the impure venous blood.

And in these small tubes the same process is going on as takes places

when the carbonic acid and water of the blood are exhaled from the

lungs. The capillaries of these tubes through the whole skin of the

body are thus constantly exhaling the noxious and decayed particles

of the body, just as the lungs pour them out through the mouth and

nose.

It has been shown that the perspiration-tubes are coiled up into a

ball at their base. The number and extent of these tubes are

astonishing. In a square inch on the palm of the hand have been counted,

through a microscope, thirty-five hundred of these tubes. Each one of

them is about a quarter of an inch in length, including its coils.

This makes the united lengths of these little tubes to be seventy-three

feet to a square inch. Their united length, over the whole body is

thus calculated to be equal to _twenty-eight miles_. What a wonderful

apparatus this! And what mischiefs must ensue when the drainage from the

body of such an extent as this becomes obstructed!

But the inside of the body also has a skin, as have all its organs.

The interior of the head, the throat, the gullet, the lungs, the

stomach, and all the intestines, are lined with a skin. This is called

the _mucous membrane_, because it is constantly secreting from the blood

a slimy substance called _mucus_. When it accumulates in the lungs, it

is called _phlegm_. This inner skin also has nerves, blood-vessels, and

lymphatics. The outer skin joins to the inner at the month, the nose,

and other openings of the body, and there is a constant sympathy between

the two skins, and thus between the inner organs and the surface of the

body.

SECRETING ORGANS.

Those vessels of the body which draw off certain portions of the blood

and change it into a new form, to be employed for service or to be

thrown out of the body, are called _secreting organs_. The skin in this

sense is a secreting organ, as its perspiration-tubes secrete or

separate the bad portions of the blood, and send them off.

Of the internal secreting organs, the _liver_ is the largest. Its chief

office is to secrete from the blood all matter not properly supplied

with oxygen. For this purpose, a set of veins carries the blood of all

the lower intestines to the liver, where the imperfectly oxidized matter

is drawn off in the form of _bile_, and accumulated in a reservoir

called the _gall-bladder_. Thence it passes to the place where the

smaller intestines receive the food from the stomach, and there it mixes

with this food. Then it passes through the long intestines, and is

thrown out of the body through the rectum. This shows how it is, that

want of pure and cool air and exercise causes excess of bile, from lack

of oxygen. The liver also has arterial blood sent to nourish it, and

corresponding veins to return this blood to the heart. So there are two

sets of blood-vessels for the liver--one to secrete the bile, and the

other to nourish the organ itself.

The kidneys secrete from the arteries that pass, through them all

excess of water in the blood, and certain injurious substances. These

are carried through small tubes to the bladder, and thence thrown out

of the body.

The _pancreas_, a whitish gland, situated in the abdomen below

the stomach, secretes from the arteries that pass through it the

pancreatic juice, which unites with the bile from the liver, in

preparing the food for nourishing the body.

There are certain little glands near the eyes that secrete the tears,

and others near the mouth that secrete the saliva, or spittle.

These organs all have arteries sent to them to nourish them, and also

veins to carry away the impure blood. At the same time, they secrete

from the arterial blood the peculiar fluid which it is their office

to supply.

All the food that passes through the lower intestines which is not

drawn off by the lacteals or by some of these secreting organs, passes

from the body through a passage called the rectum.

Learned men have made very curious experiments; to ascertain how much

the several organs throw out of the body, It is found that the skin

throws off five out of eight pounds of the food and drink, or probably

about three or four pounds a day. The lungs throw off one quarter as

much as the skin, or about a pound a day. The remainder is carried off

by the kidneys and lower intestines.

There is such a sympathy and connection between all the organs of the

body, that when one of them is unable to work, the others perform the

office of the feeble one. Thus, if the skin has its perspiration-tubes

closed up by a chill, then all the poisonous matter that would have

been thrown out through them must be emptied out either by the lungs,

kidneys, or bowels.

When all these organs are strong and healthy, they can bear this

increased labor without injury. But if the lungs are weak, the blood

sent from the skin by the chill engorges the weak blood-vessels, and

produces an inflammation of the lungs. Or it increases the discharge

of a slimy mucous substance, that exudes from the skin of the lungs.

This fills up the air-vessels, and would very soon end life, were it

not for the spasms of the lungs, called _coughing_, which throw off this

substance.

If, on the other hand, the bowels are weak, a chill of the skin sends

the blood into all the blood-vessels of the intestines, and produces

inflammation there, or else an excessive secretion of the mucous

substance, which is called a _diarrhea._ Or if the kidneys are

weak, there is an increased secretion and discharge from them, to an

unhealthy and injurious extent.

This connection between the skin and internal organs is shown, not

only by the internal effects of a chill on the skin; but by the

sympathetic effect on the skin when these internal organs suffer. For

example, there are some kinds of food that will irritate and influence

the stomach or the bowels; and this, by sympathy, will produce an

immediate eruption on the skin. Some persons, on eating strawberries,

will immediately be affected with a nettle-rash. Others can not eat

certain shell-fish without being affected in this way. Many humors on

the face are caused by a diseased state of the internal organs with

which the skin sympathizes.

This short account of the construction of the skin, and of its intimate

connection with the internal organs, shows the philosophy of those

modes of medical treatment that are addressed to this portion of the

body.

It is on this powerful agency that the steam-doctors rely, when, by

moisture and heat, they stimulate all the innumerable perspiration-tubes

and lymphatics to force out from the body a flood of unnaturally excited

secretions; while it is "kill or cure," just as the chance may meet

or oppose the demands of the case. It is the skin also that is the

chief basis of medical treatment in the Water Cure, whose slow processes

are as much safer as they are slower.

At the same time it is the ill-treatment or neglect of the skin which,

probably, is the cause of disease and decay to an incredible extent.

The various particulars in which this may be seen will now be pointed

out. In the management and care of this wonderful and complex part of

the body, many mistakes have been made.

The most common one is the misuse of the bath, especially since cold

water cures have come into use. This mode of medical treatment

originated with an ignorant peasant, amid a population where outdoor

labor had strengthened nerves and muscles and imparted rugged powers

to every part of the body. It was then introduced into England and

America without due consideration or knowledge of the diseases habits,

or real condition of patients, especially of women. The consequence

was a mode of treatment too severe and exhausting; and many practices

were spread abroad not warranted by true medical science.

But in spite of these mistakes and abuses, the treatment of the skin

for disease by the use of cold water has become an accepted doctrine

of the most learned medical practitioners. It is now held by all such

that fevers can be detected in their distinctive features by the

thermometer, and that all fevers can be reduced by cold baths and

packing in the wet sheet, in the mode employed in all water-cures.

Directions for using this method will be given in another place.

It has been supposed that large bath-tubs for immersing the whole

person are indispensable to the proper cleaning of the skin. This is

not so. A wet towel, applied every morning to the skin, followed by

friction in pure air, is all that is absolutely needed; although a

full bath is a great luxury. Access of air to every part of the skin

when its perspiratory tubes are cleared and its blood-vessels are

filled by friction is the best ordinary bath.

In early life, children should be washed all over, every night or

morning, to remove impurities from the skin. But in this process,

careful regard should be paid to the peculiar constitution of a child.

Very nervous children sometimes revolt from cold water, and like a

tepid bath. Others prefer a cold bath; and nature should be the guide.

It must be remembered that the skin is the great organ of sensation,

and in close connection with brain, spine, and nerve-centres: so that

what a strong nervous system can bear with advantage is too powerful

and exhausting for another. As age advances, or as disease debilitates

the body, great care should be taken not to overtax the nervous system

by sudden shocks, or to diminish its powers by withdrawing animal heat

to excess. Persons lacking robustness should bathe or use friction in

a warm room; and if very delicate, should expose only a portion of the

body at once to cold air.

Johnson, a celebrated writer on agricultural chemistry, tells of an

experiment by friction on the skin of pigs, whose skins are like that

of the human race. He treated six of these animals with a curry-comb

seven weeks, and left three other pigs untouched. The result was a

gain of thirty-three pounds more of weight, with the use of five bushels

less of food for those curried, than for the neglected ones. This

result was owing to the fact that all the functions of the body were

more perfectly performed when, by friction, the skin was kept free

from filth and the blood in it exposed to the air. The same will be

true of the human skin. A calculation has been made on this fact, by

which it is estimated that a man, by proper care of his skin, would

save over thirty-one dollars in food yearly, which is the interest on

over five hundred dollars. If men will give as much care to their own

skin, as they give to currying a horse, they will gain both health and

wealth.

XII.

CLOTHING.

There is no duty of those persons having control of a family where

principle and practice are more at variance than in regulating the

dress of young girls, especially at the most important and critical

period of life. It is a difficult duty for parents and teachers to

contend with the power of fashion, which at this time of a young girl's

life is frequently the ruling thought, and when to be out of the

fashion, to be odd and not dress as all her companions do, is a

mortification and grief that no argument or instructions can relieve.

The mother is often so overborne that, in spite of her better wishes,

the daughter adopts modes of dress alike ruinous to health and to

beauty.

The greatest protection against such an emergency is to train a child

to understand the construction of her own body and to impress upon

her, in early days, her obligations to the invisible Friend and Guardian

of her life, the "Former of her body and the Father of her spirit,"

who has committed to her care so precious and beautiful a casket. And

the more she can be made to realize the skill and beauty of construction

shown in her earthly frame, the more will she feel the obligation to

protect it from injury and abuse.

It is a singular fact that the war of fashion has attacked most fatally

what seems to be the strongest foundation, and defense of the body,

the bones. For this reason, the construction and functions of this

part of the body will now receive attention.

The bones are composed of two substances, one animal, and the other

mineral. The animal part is a very fine network, called _cellular

membrane._ In this are deposited the harder mineral substances,

which are composed principally of carbonate and phosphate of lime. In

very early life, the bones consist chiefly of the animal part, and are

then soft and pliant. As the child advances in age, the bones grow

harder, by the gradual deposition of the phosphate of lime, which is

supplied by the food, and carried to the bones by the blood. In old

age, the hardest material preponderates; malting the bones more brittle

than in earlier life.

The bones are covered with a thin skin or membrane, filled with small

blood-vessels which convey nourishment to them,

Where the hones unite with others to form joints, they are covered

with _cartilage,_ which is a smooth, white, elastic substance. This

enables the joints to move smoothly, while its elasticity prevents

injuries from sudden jars.

The joints are bound together by strong, elastic bands called

_ligaments,_ which hold them firmly and prevent dislocation.

Between the ends of the bones that unite to form joints are small sacks

or bags, that contain a soft lubricating fluid. This answers the same

purpose fur the joints as oil in making machinery work smoothly, while

the supply is constant and always in exact proportion to the demand.

If you will examine the leg of some fowl, you can see the cartilage

that covers the ends of the bones at the joints, and the strong white

ligaments that bind the joints together.

The health, of the bones depends on the proper nourishment and exercise

of the body as much as that of any other part. When a child is feeble

and unhealthy, or when it grows up without exercise, the bones do not

become firm and hard as they are when the body is healthfully developed

by exercise. The size as well as the strength of the bones, to a certain

extent, also depend upon exercise and good health.

[Illustration: Fig. 61]

The chief supporter of the body is the spine, which consists of

twenty-four small bones, interlocked or hooked into each other, while

between them are elastic cushions of cartilage which aid in preserving

the upright, natural position. Fig. 61 shows three of the spinal bones,

hooked into each other, the dark spaces showing the disks or flat

circular plates of cartilage between them.

The spine is held in its proper position, partly by the ribs, partly

by muscles, partly by aid of the elastic disks, and partly by the close

packing of the intestines in front of it.

The upper part of the spine is often thrown out of its proper position

by constant stooping of the head over books or work. This affects the

elastic disks so that they grow thick at the back side and thinner at

the front side by such constant pressure. The result is the awkward

projection of the head forward which is often seen in schools and

colleges.

Another distortion of the spine is produced by tight dress around the

waist. The liver occupies the right side of the body and is a solid

mass, while on the other side is the larger part of the stomach, which

is often empty. The consequence of tight dress around the waist is a

constant pressure of the spine toward the unsupported part where the

stomach lies. Thus the elastic dials again are compressed; till they

become thinner on one side than the other, and harden into that

condition. This produces what is called the _lateral curvature of the

spine,_ making one shoulder higher than the other.

The compression of the lower part of the waist is especially dangerous

at the time young girls first enter society and are tempted to dress

according to the fashion. Many a school-girl, whose waist was originally

of a proper and healthful size, has gradually pressed the soft bones

of youth until the lower ribs that should rise and fall with every

breath, become entirely unused. Then the abdominal breathing, performed

by the lower part of the lungs, ceases; the whole system becomes reduced

in strength; the abdominal muscles that hold up the interior organs

become weak, and the upper ones gradually sink upon the lower. This

pressure of the upper interior organs upon the lower ones, by tight

dress, is increased by the weight of clothing resting on the hips and

abdomen. Corsets, as usually worn, have no support from the shoulders,

and consequently all the weight of dress resting upon or above them

presses upon the hips and abdomen, and this in such a way as to throw

out of use and thus weaken the most important supporting muscles of

the abdomen, and impede abdominal breathing.

The diaphragm is a kind of muscular floor, extending across the centre

of the body, on which the heart and lungs rest. Beneath it are the

liver, stomach, and the abdominal viscera, or intestines, which are

supported by the abdominal muscles, running upward, downward, and

crosswise. When these muscles are thrown out of use, they lose their

power, the whole system of organs mainly resting on them for support

can not continue in their naturally snug, compact, and rounded form,

but become separated, elongated, and unsupported. The stomach begins

to draw from above instead of resting on the viscera beneath. This in

some cases causes dull and wandering pains, a sense of pulling at the

centre of the chest, and a drawing downward at the pit of the stomach.

Then as the support beneath is really _gone,_ there is what is often

called "a feeling of _goneness."_ This is sometimes relieved by food,

which, so long as it remains in a solid form, helps to hold up the

falling superstructure. This displacement of the stomach, liver, and

spleen interrupts their healthful functions, and dyspepsia and biliary

difficulties not unfrequently are the result.

As the stomach and its appendages fall downward, the _diaphragm_,

which holds up the heart and lungs, must descend also. In this state

of things, the inflation of the lungs is less and less aided by the

abdominal muscles, and is confined chiefly to their upper portion.

Breathing sometimes thus becomes quicker and shorter on account of the

elongated or debilitated condition of the assisting organs. Consumption

not unfrequently results from this cause.

The _heart_ also feels the evil. "Palpitations," "flutterings,"

"sinking feelings," all show that, in the language of Scripture, "the

heart trembleth, and is moved out of its place."

But the _lower intestines_ are the greatest sufferers from this

dreadful abuse of nature. Having the weight of all the unsupported

organs above pressing them into unnatural and distorted positions, the

passage of the food is interrupted, and inflammations, indurations,

and constipation, are the frequent result. Dreadful ulcers and cancers

may be traced in some instances to this cause.

Although these internal displacements are most common among women,

some foolish members of the other sex are adopting customs of dress,

in girding the central portion of the body, that tend to similar

results.

But this distortion brings upon woman peculiar distresses. The pressure

of the whole superincumbent mass on the pelvic or lower organs induces

sufferings proportioned in acuteness to the extreme delicacy and

sensitiveness of the parts thus crushed. And the intimate connection

of these organs with the brain and whole nervous system renders injuries

thus inflicted the causes of the most extreme anguish, both of body

and mind. This evil is becoming so common, not only among married

women, but among young girls, as to be a just cause for universal

alarm.

How very common these sufferings are, few but the medical profession

can realize, because they are troubles that must be concealed. Many

a woman is moving about in uncomplaining agony who, with any other

trouble involving equal suffering, would be on her bed surrounded by

sympathizing friends.

The terrible sufferings that are sometimes thus induced can never be

conceived of, or at all appreciated from, any use of language. Nothing

that the public can be made to believe on this subject will ever equal

the reality. Not only mature persons and mothers, but fair young girls

sometimes, are shut up for months and years as helpless and suffering

invalids from this cause. This may be found all over the land. And

there frequently is a horrible extremity of suffering in certain forms

of this evil, which no woman of feeble constitution can ever be certain

may not be her doom. Not that in all cases this extremity is involved,

but none can say who will escape it.

In regard to this, if one must choose for a friend or a child, on the

one hand, the horrible torments inflicted by savage Indians or cruel

inquisitors on their victims, or, on the other, the protracted agonies

that result from such deformities and displacements, sometimes the

former would be a merciful exchange.

And yet this is the fate that is coming to meet the young as well as

the mature in every direction. And tender parents are unconsciously

leading their lovely and hapless daughters to this awful doom.

There is no excitement of the imagination in what is here indicated.

If the facts and details could be presented, they would send a groan

of terror all over the land. For it is not one class, or one section,

that is endangered. In every part of our country the evil is

progressing.

And, as if these dreadful ills were not enough, there have been added

methods of medical treatment at once useless, torturing to the mind,

and involving great liability to immoralities.

[Illustration: Fig. 62.]

In hope of abating these evils, drawings are given (Fig. 62 and Fig.

63) of the front and back of a jacket that will preserve the advantages

of the corset without its evils. This jacket may at first be fitted

to the figure with corsets underneath it, just like the waist of a

dress. Then, delicate whalebones can be used to stiffen the jacket,

so that it will take the proper shape, when the corset may be dispensed

with. The buttons below are to hold all articles of dress below the

waist by button-holes. By this method, the bust is supported as well

as by corsets, while the shoulders support from above, as they should

do, the weight of the dress below. No stiff bone should be allowed to

press in front, and the jacket should be so loose that a full breath

can be inspired with ease, while in a sitting position.

[Illustration: Fig. 63.]

The proper way to dress a young girl is to have a cotton or flannel

close-fitting jacket next the body, to which the drawers should be

buttoned. Over this, place the chemise; and over that, such a jacket

as the one here drawn, to which should be buttoned the hoops and other

skirts. Thus every article of dress will be supported by the shoulders.

The sleeves of the jacket can be omitted, and in that ease a strong

lining, and also a tape binding, must surround the arm-hole, which

should be loose.

It is hoped that increase of intelligence and moral power among mothers,

and a combination among them to regulate fashions, may banish the

pernicious practices that have prevailed. If a school-girl dress

without corsets and without tight belts could be established as a

fashion, it would be one step gained in the right direction. Then if

mothers could secure daily domestic exercise in chambers, eating-rooms

and parlors in loose dresses, a still farther advance would be secured.

A friend of the writer informs her that her daughter had her wedding

outfit made up by a fashionable milliner in Paris, and every dress was

beautifully fitted to the form, and yet was not compressing to any

part. This was done too without the use of corsets, the stiffening

being delicate and yielding whalebones.

Not only parents but all having the care of young girls, especially

those at boarding-schools, have a fearful responsibility resting upon

them in regard to this important duty.

In regard to the dressing of young children, much discretion is needed

to adapt dress to circumstances and peculiar constitutions. The leading

fact must be borne in mind that the skin is made strong and healthful

by exposure to light and pure air, while cold air, if not excessive,

has a tonic influence. If the skin of infants is rubbed with the hand

till red with blood, and then exposed naked to sun and air in a

well-ventilated room, it will be favorable to health.

There is a constitutional difference in the skin of different children

in regard to retaining the animal heat manufactured within, so that

some need more clothing than others for comfort. Nature is a safe guide

to a careful nurse and mother, and will indicate by the looks and

actions of a child when more clothing is needful. As a general rule,

it is safe for a healthful child to wear as little clothing as suffices

to keep it from complaining of cold. Fifty years ago, it was not common

for children to wear as much under-clothing as they now do. The writer

well remembers how even girls, though not of strong constitutions,

used to play for hours in the snow-drifts without the protection of

drawers, kept warm by exercise and occasional runs to an open fire.

And multitudes of children grew to vigorous maturity through similar

exposures to cold air-baths, and without the frequent, colds and

sicknesses so common among children of the present day, who are more

carefully housed and warmly dressed. But care was taken that the feet

should be kept dry and warmly clad, because, circulation being feebler

in the extremities, this precaution was important.

It must also be considered that age brings with it decrease in vigor

of circulation, and the consequent generation of heat, so that more

warmth of air and clothing is needed at an advanced period of life

than is suitable for the young.

These are the general principles which must be applied with modification

to each individual case. A child of delicate constitution must have

more careful protection from cold air than is desirable for one more

vigorous, while the leading general principle is retained that cold

air is a healthful tonic for the skin whenever it does not produce an

uncomfortable chilliness.

XIII.

GOOD COOKING.

There are but a few things on which health, and happiness depend more

than on the manner in which food is cooked. You may make houses

enchantingly beautiful, hang them with pictures, have them clean and

airy and convenient; but if the stomach is fed with sour bread and

burnt meats, it will raise such rebellions that the eyes will see no

beauty anywhere. The abundance of splendid material we have in America

is in great contrast with the style of cooking most prevalent in our

country. How often, in journeys, do we sit down to tables loaded with

material, originally of the very best kind, winch has been so spoiled

in the treatment that there is really nothing to eat! Green biscuits

with acrid spots of alkali; sour yeast-bread; meat slowly simmered in

fat till it seemed like grease itself, and slowly congealing in cold

grease; and above all, that unpardonable enormity, strong butter! How

one longs to show people what might have been done with the raw material

out of which all these monstrosities were concocted!

There is no country where an ample, well-furnished table is more easily

spread, and for that reason, perhaps, none where the bounties of

Providence are more generally neglected. Considering that our resources

are greater than those of any other civilized people, our results are

comparatively poorer.

It is said that a list of the summer vegetables which are exhibited

on New-York hotel-tables being shown to a French _artiste_, he

declared that to serve such a dinner properly would take till midnight.

A traveler can not but be struck with our national plenteousness, on

returning from a Continental tour, and going directly from the ship

to a New-York hotel, in the bounteous season of autumn. For months

habituated to neat little bits of chop or poultry, garnished with the

inevitable cauliflower or potato, which seemed to be the sole

possibility after the reign of green peas was over; to sit down all

at once to such a carnival! to such ripe, juicy tomatoes, raw or cooked;

cucumbers in brittle slices; rich, yellow sweet-potatoes; broad

lima-beans, and beans of other and various names; tempting ears of

Indian-corn steaming in enormous piles; great smoking tureens of the

savory succotash, an Indian gift to the table for which civilization

need not blush; sliced egg-plant in delicate fritters; and marrow-

squashes, of creamy pulp and sweetness; a rich variety, embarrassing

to the appetite, and perplexing to the choice.

Verily, the thought must often occur that the vegetarian doctrine

preached in America leaves a man quite as much as he has capacity to

eat or enjoy, and that in the midst of such tantalizing abundance he

has really lost the apology, which elsewhere bears him out in preying

upon his less gifted and accomplished animal neighbors.

But with all this, the American table, taken as a whole, is inferior

to that of England or France. It presents a fine abundance of material,

carelessly and poorly treated. The management of food is nowhere in

the world, perhaps, more slovenly and wasteful. Every thing betokens

that want of care that waits on abundance; there are great capabilities

and poor execution. A tourist through England can seldom fail, at the

quietest country-inn, of finding himself served with the essentials

of English table-comfort--his mutton-chop done to a turn, his steaming

little private apparatus for concocting his own tea, his choice pot

of marmalade or slice of cold ham, and his delicate rolls and creamy

butter, all served with care and neatness. In France, one never asks

in vain for delicious _cafe-au-lait_, good bread and butter, a

nice omelet, or some savory little portion of meat with a French name.

But to a tourist taking like chance in American country-fare, what is

the prospect? What is the coffee? what the tea? and the meat? and above

all, the butter?

In writing on cooking, the main topics should be first, bread; second,

butter; third, meat; fourth, vegetables; and fifth, tea--by which

last is meant, generally, all sorts of warm, comfortable drinks served

out in tea-cups, whether they be called tea, coffee, chocolate, broma,

or what not.

If these five departments are all perfect, the great ends of domestic

cookery are answered, so far as the comfort and well-being of life

are concerned. There exists another department, which is often regarded

by culinary amateurs and young aspirants as the higher branch and very

collegiate course of practical cookery; to wit, confectionery, by which

is designated all pleasing and complicated compounds of sweets and

spices, devised not for health and nourishment, and strongly suspected

of interfering with both--mere tolerated gratifications of the palate,

which we eat, not with the expectation of being benefited, but only

with the hope of not being injured by them. In this large department

rank all sorts of cakes, pies, preserves, etc., whose excellence is

often attained by treading under foot and disregarding the five grand

essentials.

There is many a table garnished with three or four kinds of well-made

cake, compounded with citron and spices and all imaginable good things,

where the meat was tough and greasy, the bread some hot preparation

of flour, lard, saleratus, and acid, and the butter unutterably

detestable, where, if the mistress of the feast had given the care,

time, and labor to preparing the simple items of bread, butter, and

meat, that she evidently had given to the preparation of these extras,

the lot of her guests and family might be much more comfortable. But

she does not think of these common articles as constituting a good

table. So long as she has puff pastry, rich black cake, clear jelly

and preserves, she considers that such unimportant matters as bread,

butter, and meat may take care of themselves. It is the same inattention

to common things as that which leads people to build houses with stone

fronts, and window-caps and expensive front-door trimmings, without

bathing-rooms or fireplaces, or ventilators.

Those who go into the country looking for summer board in farm-houses

know perfectly well that a table where the butter is always fresh, the

tea and coffee of the best kinds and well made, and the meats properly

kept, dressed, and served, is the one table of a hundred, the fabulous

enchanted island. It seems impossible to get the idea into the minds

of many people that what is called common food, carefully prepared,

becomes, in virtue of that very care and attention, a delicacy,

superseding the necessity of artificially compounded dainties. To

begin, then, with the very foundation of a good table:

--_Bread:_ What ought it to be?

It should be light, sweet, and tender. This matter of lightness is the

distinctive line between savage and civilized bread. The savage mixes

simple flour and water into balls of paste, which he throws into boiling

water, and which come out solid, glutinous masses, of which his common

saying is, "Man eat dis, he no die," which a facetious traveler who

was obliged to subsist on it interpreted to mean, "Dis no kill you,

nothing will." In short, it requires the stomach of a wild animal or

of a savage to digest this primitive form of bread, and of course more

or less attention in all civilized modes of bread-making is given to

producing lightness. By lightness is meant simply that in order to

facilitate digestion the particles are to be separated from each other

by little holes or air-cells; and all the different methods of making

light bread are neither more nor less than the formation of bread with

these air-cells.

So far as we know, there are four practicable methods of aerating

bread; namely, by fermentation; by effervescence of an acid and an

alkali; by aerated egg, or egg which has been filled with air by the

process of beating; and lastly, by pressure of some gaseous substance

into the paste, by a process much resembling the impregnation of water

in a soda-fountain. All those have one and the same object--to give

us the cooked particles of our flour separated by such permanent

air-cells as will enable the stomach more readily to digest them.

A very common mode of aerating bread in America is by the effervescence

of an acid and an alkali in the flour. The carbonic acid gas time

formed products minute air-cells in the bread, or, as the cook says,

makes it light. When this process is performed with exact attention

to chemical laws, so that the acid and alkali completely neutralize

each other, leaving no overplus of either, the result is often very

palatable. The difficulty is, that this is a happy conjunction of

circumstances which seldom occurs. The acid most commonly employed is

that of sour milk, and, as milk has many degrees of sourness, the rule

of a certain quantity of alkali to the pint must necessarily produce

very different results at different times. As an actual fact where

this mode of making bread prevails, as we lament to say it does to a

great extent in this country, one finds five cases of failure to one

of success.

It is a woeful thing that the daughters of our land have abandoned the

old respectable mode of yeast-brewing and bread-raising for this

specious substitute, so easily made, and so seldom well made. The

green, clammy, acrid substance, called biscuit, which many of our

worthy republicans are obliged to eat in these days, is wholly unworthy

of the men and women of the republic. Good patriots ought not to

be put off in that way--they deserve better fare.

As an occasional variety, as a household convenience for obtaining

bread or biscuit at a moment's notice, the process of effervescence

may be retained; but, we earnestly entreat American housekeepers, in

scriptural language, to stand in the way and ask for the old paths,

and return to the good yeast-bread of their sainted grandmothers.

If acid and alkali must be used, by all means let them be mixed in due

proportions. No cook should be left to guess and judge for herself

about this matter. There are articles made by chemical rule which

produce very perfect results, and the use of them obviates the worst

dangers in making bread by effervescence.

Of all processes of aeration in bread-making, the oldest and most

time-honored mode is by fermentation. That this was known in the days

of our Saviour is evident from the forcible simile in which he compares

the silent permeating force of truth in human, society to the very

familiar household process of raising bread by a little yeast.

There is, however, one species of yeast, much used in some parts of

the country, against which protest should be made. It is called

salt-risings, or milk-risings, and is made by mixing flour, milk, and

a little salt together, and leaving them to ferment. The bread thus

produced is often, very attractive, when new and made with great care.

It is white and delicate, with fine, even air-cells. It has, however,

when kept, some characteristics which remind us of the terms in which

our old English Bible describes the effect of keeping the manna of the

ancient Israelites, which we are informed, in words more explicit than

agreeable, "stank, and bred worms." If salt-rising bread does not

fulfill the whole of this unpleasant description, it certainly does

emphatically a part of it. The smell which it has in baking, and when

more than a day old, suggests the inquiry, whether it is the saccharine

or the putrid fermentation with which it is raised. Whoever breaks a

piece of it after a day or two, will often see minute filaments or

clammy strings drawing out from the fragments, which, with the

unmistakable smell, will cause him to pause before consummating a

nearer acquaintance.

The fermentation of flour by means of brewer's or distiller's yeast

produces, if rightly managed, results far more palatable and wholesome.

The only requisites for success in it are, first, good materials, and,

second, great care in small things. There are certain low-priced or

damaged kinds of flour which can never by any kind of domestic chemistry

be made into good broad; and to those persons whose stomachs forbid

them to eat gummy, glutinous paste, under the name of bread, there is

no economy in buying these poor brands, even at half the price of good

flour.

But good flour and good yeast being supposed, with a temperature

favorable to the development of fermentation, the whole success of the

process depends on the thorough diffusion of the proper proportion of

yeast through the whole mass, and on stopping the subsequent

fermentation at the precise and fortunate point. The true housewife

makes her bread the sovereign of her kitchen--its behests must be

attended to in all critical points and moments, no matter what else

be postponed.

She who attends to her bread only when she has done this, and arranged

that, and performed the other, very often finds that the forces of

nature will not wait for her. The snowy mass, perfectly mixed, kneaded

with care and strength, rises in its beautiful perfection till the

moment comes for filling the air-cells by baking. A few minutes now,

and the acetous fermentation will begin, and the whole result be

spoiled. Many bread-makers pass in utter carelessness over this sacred

and mysterious boundary. Their oven has cake in it, or they are skimming

jelly, or attending to some other of the so-called higher branches of

cookery, while the bread is quickly passing into the acetous stage.

At last, when they are ready to attend to it, they find that it has

been going its own way,--it is so sour that the pungent smell is plainly

perceptible. Now the saleratus-bottle is handed down, and a quantity

of the dissolved alkali mixed with the paste--an expedient sometimes

making itself too manifest by greenish streaks or small acrid spots

in the bread. As the result, we have a beautiful article spoiled--bread

without sweetness, if not absolutely sour.

In the view of many, lightness is the only property required in this

article. The delicate refined sweetness which exists in carefully

kneaded bread, baked just before it passes to the extreme point of

fermentation, is something, of which they have no conception; and thus

they will even regard this process of spoiling the paste by the acetous

fermentation, and then rectifying that acid by effervescence with an

alkali, as something positively meritorious. How else can they value

and relish bakers' loaves, such as some are, drugged with ammonia and

other disagreeable things; light indeed, so light that they seem to

have neither weight nor substance, but with no more sweetness or taste

than so much cotton wool?

Some persons prepare bread for the oven by simply mixing it in the

mass, without kneading, pouring it into pans, and suffering it to rise

there. The air-cells in bread thus prepared are coarse and uneven; the

bread is as inferior in delicacy and nicety to that which is well

kneaded as a raw servant to a perfectly educated and refined lady. The

process of kneading seems to impart an evenness to the minute air-cells,

a fineness of texture, and a tenderness and pliability to the whole

substance, that can be gained in no other way.

The divine principle of beauty has its reign over bread as well as

over all other things; it has its laws of aesthetics; and that bread

which is so prepared that it can be formed into separate and

well-proportioned loaves, each one carefully worked and moulded, will

develop the most beautiful results. After being moulded, the loaves

should stand usually not over ten minutes, just long enough to allow

the fermentation going on in them to expand each little air-cell to

the point at which it stood before it was worked down, and then they

should be immediately put into the oven.

Many a good thing, however, is spoiled in the oven. We can not but

regret, for the sake of bread, that our old steady brick ovens have

been almost universally superseded by those of ranges and

cooking-stoves, which are infinite in their caprices, and forbid all

general rules. One thing, however, may be borne in mind as

a principle--that the excellence of bread in all its varieties, plain

or sweetened, depends on the perfection of its air-cells, whether

produced by yeast, egg, or effervescence; that one of the objects of

baking is to fix these air-cells, and that the quicker this can be

done through the whole mass, the better will the result be. When cake

or bread is made heavy by baking too quickly, it is because the

immediate formation of the top crust hinders the exhaling of the

moisture in the centre, and prevents the air-cells from cooking. The

weight also of the crust pressing down on the doughy air-cells below

destroys them, producing that horror of good cooks, a heavy streak.

The problem in baking, then, is the quick application of heat rather

below than above the loaf, and its steady continuance till all the

air-cells are thoroughly dried into permanent consistency. Every

housewife must watch her own oven to know how this can be best

accomplished.

Bread-making can be cultivated to any extent as a fine art--and the

various kinds of biscuit, tea-rusks, twists, rolls, into which bread

may be made, are much better worth a housekeeper's ambition than the

getting-up of rich and expensive cake or confections. There are also

varieties of material which are rich in good effects. Unbolted flour,

altogether more wholesome than the fine wheat, and when properly

prepared more palatable--rye-flour and corn-meal, each affording a

thousand attractive possibilities--all of these come under the general

laws of bread-stuffs, and are worth a careful attention.

A peculiarity of our American table, particularly in the Southern and

Western States, is the constant exhibition of various preparations of

hot bread. In many families of the South and West, bread in loaves to

be eaten cold is an article quite unknown. The effect of this kind of

diet upon the health has formed a frequent subject of remark among

travelers; but only those know the full mischiefs of it who have been

compelled to sojourn for a length of time in families where it is

maintained. The unknown horrors of dyspepsia from bad bread are a topic

over which we willingly draw a veil.

Next to Bread comes _Butter_--on which we have to say, that, when

we remember what butter is in civilized Europe, and compare it with

what it is in America, we wonder at the forbearance and lenity of

travelers in their strictures on our national commissariat.

Butter, in England, France, and Italy, is simply solidified cream,

with all the sweetness of the cream in its taste, freshly churned each

day, and unadulterated by salt. At the present moment, when salt is

five cents a pound and butter fifty, we Americans are paying, at high

prices, for about one pound of salt to every ten of butter, and those

of us who have eaten the butter of France and England do this with

rueful recollections.

There is, it is true, an article of butter made in the American style

with salt, which, in its own kind and way, has a merit not inferior

to that of England and France. Many prefer it, and it certainly takes

a rank equally respectable with the other. It is yellow, hard, and

worked so perfectly free from every particle of buttermilk that it

might make the voyage of the world without spoiling. It is salted, but

salted with care and delicacy, so that it may be a question whether

even a fastidious Englishman might not prefer its golden solidity to

the white, creamy freshness of his own. But it is to be regretted that

this article is the exception, and not the rule, on our tables.

America must have the credit of manufacturing and putting into market

more bad butter than all that is made in all the rest of the world

together. The varieties of bad tastes and smells which prevail in it

are quite a study. This has a cheesy taste, that a mouldy, this is

flavored with cabbage, and that again with turnip, and another has the

strong, sharp savor of rancid animal fat. These varieties probably

come from the practice of churning only at long intervals, and keeping

the cream meanwhile in unventilated cellars or dairies, the air of

which is loaded with the effluvia of vegetable substances. No domestic

articles are so sympathetic as those of the milk tribe: they readily

take on the smell and taste of any neighboring substance, and hence

the infinite variety of flavors on which one mournfully muses who has

late in autumn to taste twenty firkins of butter in hopes of finding

one which will simply not be intolerable on his winter table.

A matter for despair as regards bad butter is, that at the tables where

it is used it stands sentinel at the door to bar your way to every

other kind of food. You turn from your dreadful half-slice of bread,

which fills your mouth with bitterness, to-your beef-steak, which

proves virulent with the same poison; you think to take refuge in

vegetable diet, and find the butter in the string-beans, and polluting

the innocence of early peas; it is in the corn, hi the succotash, in

the squash; the beets swim in it, the onions have it poured over them.

Hungry and miserable, you think to solace yourself at the dessert; but

the pastry is cursed, the cake is acrid with the same plague. You are

ready to howl with despair, and your misery is great upon

you--especially if this is a table where you have taken board for three

months with your delicate wife and four small children. Your case is

dreadful, and it is hopeless, because long usage and habit have rendered

your host perfectly incapable of discovering what is the matter. "Don't

like the butter, sir? I assure you I paid an extra price for it, and

it's the very best in the market. I looked over as many as a hundred

tubs, and picked out this one." You are dumb, but not less despairing.

Yet the process of making good butter is a very simple one. To keep

the cream in a perfectly pure, cool atmosphere, to churn while it is

yet sweet, to work out the buttermilk thoroughly, and to add salt with

such discretion as not to ruin the fine, delicate flavor of the fresh

cream--all this is quite simple, so simple that one wonders at thousands

and millions of pounds of butter yearly manufactured which are merely

a hobgoblin bewitchment of cream into foul and loathsome poisons.

The third head of my discourse is that of _Meat_, of which America

furnishes, in the gross material, enough to spread our tables royally,

were it well cared for and served.

The faults in the meat generally furnished to us are, first, that it

is too new. A beef steak, which three or four days of keeping might

render palatable, is served up to us palpitating with freshness, with

all the toughness of animal muscle yet warm.

In the next place, there is a woeful lack of nicety in the butcher's

work of cutting and preparing meat. Who that remembers the neatly

trimmed mutton-chop of an English inn, or the artistic little circle

of lamb-chop fried in bread-crumbs coiled around a tempting centre of

spinach which may always be found in France, can recognize any family

resemblance to those dapper, civilized preparations, in these coarse,

roughly-hacked strips of bone, gristle, and meat which are commonly

called mutton-chop in America? There seems to be a large dish of

something resembling meat, in which each fragment has about two or

three edible morsels, the rest being composed of dry and burnt skin,

fat, and ragged bone.

Is it not time that civilization should learn to demand somewhat more

care and nicety in the modes of preparing what is to be cooked and

eaten? Might not some of the refinement and trimness which characterize

the preparations of the European market be with advantage introduced

into our own? The housekeeper who wishes to garnish her table with

some of those nice things is stopped in the outset by the butcher.

Except in our large cities, where some foreign travel may have created

the demand, it seems impossible to get much in this line that is

properly prepared.

If this is urged on the score of aesthetics, the ready reply will be,

"Oh! we can't give time here in America to go into niceties and French

whim-whams!" But the French mode of doing almost all practical things

is based on that true philosophy and utilitarian good sense which

characterize that seemingly thoughtless people. Nowhere is economy a

more careful study, and their market is artistically arranged to this

end. The rule is so to cut their meats that no portion designed to be

cooked in a certain manner shall have wasteful appendages which that

mode of cooking will spoil. The French soup-kettle stands ever ready

to receive the bones, the thin fibrous flaps, the sinewy and gristly

portions, which are so often included in our roasts or broilings, which

fill our plates with unsightly _debris_, and finally make an amount of

blank waste for which we pay our butcher the same price that we pay for

what we have eaten.

The dead waste of our clumsy, coarse way of cutting meats is immense.

For example, at the beginning of the season, the part of a lamb

denominated leg and loin, or hind-quarter, may sell for thirty cents

a pound. Now this includes, besides the thick, fleshy portions, a

quantity of bone, sinew, and thin fibrous substance, constituting full

one third of the whole weight. If we put it into the oven entire, in

the usual manner, we have the thin parts over-done, and the skinny

and fibrous parts utterly dried up, by the application of the amount

of heat necessary to cook the thick portion. Supposing the joint to

weigh six pounds, at thirty cents, and that one third of the weight

is so treated as to become perfectly useless, we throw away sixty

cents. Of a piece of beef at twenty-five cents a pound, fifty cents'

worth is often lost in bone, fat, and burnt skin.

The fact is, this way of selling and cooking meat in large,

gross portions is of English origin, and belongs to a country where all

the customs of society spring from a class who have no particular

occasion for economy. The practice of minute and delicate division

comes from a nation which acknowledges the need of economy, and has

made it a study. A quarter of lamb in this mode of division would be

sold in three nicely prepared portions. The thick part would be sold

by itself, for a neat, compact little roast; the rib-bones would be

artistically separated, and all the edible matter would form those

delicate dishes of lamb-chop, which, fried in bread-crumbs to a golden

brown, are so ornamental and palatable a side-dish; the trimmings which

remain after this division would be destined to the soup-kettle or

stew-pan.

In a French market is a little portion for every purse, and the

far-famed and delicately flavored soups and stews which have arisen

out of French economy are a study worth a housekeeper's attention. Not

one atom of food is wasted in the French modes of preparation; even

tough animal cartilages and sinews, instead of appearing burned and

blackened in company with the roast meat to which they happen to be

related, are treated according to their own laws, and come out either

in savory soups, or those fine, clear meat-jellies which form a garnish

no less agreeable to the eye than palatable to the taste.

Whether this careful, economical, practical style of meat-cooking can

ever to any great extent be introduced into our kitchens now is a

question. Our butchers are against it; our servants are wedded to the

old wholesale wasteful ways, which seem to them easier because they

are accustomed to them. A cook who will keep and properly tend a

soup-kettle which shall receive and utilize all that the coarse

preparations of the butcher would require her to trim away, who

understands the art of making the most of all these remains, is a

treasure scarcely to be hoped for. If such things are to be done, it

must be primarily through the educated brain of cultivated women who

do not scorn to turn their culture and refinement upon domestic

problems.

When meats have been properly divided, so that each portion can receive

its own appropriate style of treatment, next comes the consideration

of the modes of cooking. These may be divided into two great general

classes: those where it is desired to keep the juices within the meat,

as in baking, broiling, and frying--and those whose object is to extract

the juice and dissolve the fibre, as in the making of soups and stews.

In the first class of operations, the process must be as rapid as may

consist with the thorough cooking of all the particles. In this branch

of cookery, doing quickly is doing well. The fire must be brisk, the

attention alert. The introduction of cooking-stoves offers to careless

domestics facilities for gradually drying-up meats, and despoiling

them of all flavor and nutriment--facilities which appear to be very

generally accepted. They have almost banished the genuine, old-fashioned

roast-meat from our tables, and left in its stead dried meats with

their most precious and nutritive juices evaporated. How few cooks,

unassisted, are competent to the simple process of broiling a beefsteak

or mutton-chop! how very generally one has to choose between these

meats gradually dried away, or burned on the outside and raw within!

Yet in England these articles _never_ come on the table done amiss;

their perfect cooking is as absolute a certainty as the rising of the

sun.

No one of these rapid processes of cooking, however, is so generally

abused as frying. The frying-pan has awful sins to answer for. What

untold horrors of dyspepsia have arisen from its smoky depths, like

the ghost from witches' caldrons! The fizzle of frying meat is a warning

knell on many an ear, saying, "Touch not, taste not, if you would not

burn and writhe!"

Yet those who have traveled abroad remember that some of the lightest,

most palatable, and most digestible preparations of meat have come

from this dangerous source. But we fancy quite other rites and

ceremonies inaugurated the process, and quite other hands performed

its offices, than those known to our kitchens. Probably the delicate

_cotelettes_ of France are not flopped down into half-melted

grease, there gradually to warm and soak and fizzle, while Biddy goes

in and out on her other ministrations, till finally, when they are

thoroughly saturated, and dinner-hour impends, she bethinks herself,

and crowds the fire below to a roaring heat, and finishes the process

by a smart burn, involving the kitchen and surrounding precincts in

volumes of Stygian gloom. From such preparations has arisen the very

current medical opinion that fried meats are indigestible. They are

indigestible, if they are greasy; but French cooks have taught us that

a thing has no more need to be greasy because emerging from grease

than Venus had to be salt because she rose from the sea.

There are two ways of frying employed by the French cook. One is, to

immerse the article to be cooked in _boiling_ fat, with an emphasis

on the present participle--and the philosophical principle is, so

immediately to crisp every pore, at the first moment or two of

immersion, as effectually to seal the interior against the intrusion

of greasy particles; it can then remain as long as may be necessary

thoroughly to cook it, without imbibing any more of the boiling fluid

than if it were inclosed in an egg-shell. The other method is to rub

a perfectly smooth iron surface with just enough of some oily substance

to prevent the meat from adhering, and cook it with a quick heat, as

cakes are baked, on a griddle. In both these cases there must be the

most rapid application of heat that can be made without burning, and

by the adroitness shown in working out this problem the skill of the

cook is tested. Any one whose cook attains this important secret will

find fried things quite as digestible, and often more palatable, than

any other.

In the second department of meat-cookery, to wit, the slow and gradual

application of heat for the softening and dissolution of its fibre and

the extraction of its juices, common cooks are equally untrained. Where

is the so-called cook who understands how to prepare soups and stews?

These are precisely the articles in which a French kitchen excels. The

soup-kettle, made with a double bottom, to prevent burning, is a

permanent, ever-present institution, and the coarsest and most

impracticable meats distilled through that alembic come out again in

soups, jellies, or savory stews. The toughest cartilage, even the

bones, being first cracked, are here made to give forth their hidden

virtues, and to rise in delicate and appetizing forms.

One great law governs all these preparations: the application of heat

must be gradual, steady, long protracted, never reaching the point of

active boiling. Hours of quiet simmering dissolve all dissoluble parts,

soften the sternest fibre, and unlock every minute cell in which Nature

has stored away her treasures of nourishment. This careful and

protracted application of heat and the skillful use of flavors

constitute the two main points in all those nice preparations of meat

for which the French have so many names--processes by which a delicacy

can be imparted to the coarsest and cheapest food superior to that of

the finest articles under less philosophic treatment.

French soups and stews are a study, and they would not be an

unprofitable one to any person who wishes to live with comfort and

even elegance on small means.

There is no animal fibre that will not yield itself up to long-

continued, steady heat. But the difficulty with almost any of the

common servants who call themselves cooks is, that they have not the

smallest notion of the philosophy of the application of heat. Such a

one will complacently tell you concerning certain meats, that the

harder you boil them the harder they grow--an obvious fact which, under

her mode of treatment by an indiscriminate galloping boil, has

frequently come under her personal observation. If you tell her that

such meat must stand for six hours in a heat just below the boiling

point, she will probably answer, "Yes, ma'am," and go on her own way.

Or she will let it stand till it burns to the bottom of the kettle--a

most common termination of the experiment.

The only way to make sure of the matter is, either to obtain a French

kettle, or to fit into an ordinary kettle a false bottom, such as any

tinman may make, that shall leave a space of an inch or two between

the meat and the fire. This kettle may be maintained in a constant

position on the range, and into it the cook maybe instructed to throw

all the fibrous trimmings of meat, all the gristle, tendons, and bones,

having previously broken up these last with a mallet. Such a kettle,

the regular occupant of a French cooking-stove, which they call the

_pot au feu_, will furnish the basis for clear, rich soups, or other

palatable dishes. This is ordinarily called "stock."

Clear soup consists of the dissolved juices of the meat and gelatine

of the bones, cleared from the fat and fibrous portions by straining.

The grease, which rises to the top of the fluid, may be easily removed

when cold.

English and American soups are often heavy and hot with spices. There

are appreciable tastes in them. They burn your mouth with cayenne, or

clove, or allspice. You can tell at once what is in them, oftentimes

to your sorrow. But a French soup has a flavor which one recognizes

at once as delicious, yet not to be characterized as due to any single

condiment; it is the just blending of many things. The same remark

applies to all their stews; ragouts, and other delicate preparations.

No cook will ever study these flavors; but perhaps many cooks'

mistresses may, and thus, be able to impart delicacy and comfort to

economy.

As to those things called hashes, commonly manufactured by unwatched,

untaught cooks out of the remains of yesterday's meal, let us not dwell

too closely on their memory--compounds of meat, gristle, skin, fat,

and burnt fibre, with a handful of pepper and salt flung at them,

dredged with lumpy flour, watered from the spout of the tea-kettle,

and left to simmer at the cook's convenience while she is otherwise

occupied. Such are the best performances a housekeeper can hope for

from an untrained cook.

But the cunningly devised minces, the artful preparations choicely

flavored, which may be made of yesterday's repast--by these is the

true domestic artist known. No cook untaught by an educated brain ever

makes these, and yet economy is a great gainer by them.

As regards the department of _Vegetables_, their number and variety

in America are so great that a table might almost be furnished by these

alone. Generally speaking, their cooking is a more simple art, and

therefore more likely to be found satisfactorily performed, than that

of meats. If only they are not drenched with rancid butter, their own

native excellence makes itself known in most of the ordinary modes of

preparation.

There is, however, one exception. Our staunch old friend, the potato,

is to other vegetables what bread is on the table. Like bread, it is

held as a sort of _sine-qua-non_; like that, it may be made invariably

palatable by a little care in a few plain particulars, through neglect

of which it often becomes intolerable. The soggy, waxy, indigestible

viand that often appears in the potato-dish is a downright sacrifice of

the better nature of this vegetable.

The potato, nutritive and harmless as it appears, belongs to a family

suspected of very dangerous traits. It is a family connection of the

deadly-nightshade and other ill-reputed gentry, and sometimes shows

strange proclivities to evil--now breaking out uproariously, as in the

noted potato-rot, and now more covertly, in various evil affections.

For this reason scientific directors bid us beware of the water in

which potatoes are boiled-into which, it appears, the evil principle

is drawn off; and they caution us not to shred them into stews without

previously suffering the slices to lie for an hour or so in salt and

water. These cautions are worth attention.

The most usual modes of preparing the potato for the table are by

roasting or boiling. These processes are so simple that it is commonly

supposed every cook understands them without special directions; and

yet there is scarcely an uninstructed cook who can boil or roast a

potato.

A good roasted potato is a delicacy worth a dozen compositions of the

cook-book; yet when we ask for it, what burnt, shriveled abortions are

presented to us! Biddy rushes to her potato-basket and pours out two

dozen of different sizes, some having in them three times the amount

of matter of others. These being washed, she tumbles them into her

oven at a leisure interval, and there lets them lie till it is time

to serve breakfast, whenever that may be. As a result, if the largest

are cooked, the smallest are presented in cinders, and the intermediate

sizes are withered and watery. Nothing is so utterly ruined by a few

moments of overdoing. That which at the right moment was plump with

mealy richness, a quarter of an hour later shrivels and becomes watery--

and it is in this state that roast potatoes are most frequently served.

In the same manner we have seen boiled potatoes from an untaught cook

coming upon the table like lumps of yellow wax--and the same article,

under the directions of a skillful mistress, appearing in snowy balls

of powdery whiteness. In the one case, they were thrown in their skins

into water, and suffered to soak or boil, as the case might be, at the

cook's leisure, and after they were boiled to stand in the water till

she was ready to peel them. In the other case, the potatoes being first

peeled were boiled as quickly as possible in salted water, which the

moment they were done was drained off, and then they were gently shaken

for a moment or two over the fire to dry them still more thoroughly.

We have never yet seen the potato so depraved and given over to evil

that it could not be reclaimed by this mode of treatment.

As to fried potatoes, who that remembers the crisp, golden slices of

the French restaurant, thin as wafers and light as snow-flakes, does

not speak respectfully of them? What cousinship with these have those

coarse, greasy masses of sliced potato, wholly soggy and partly burnt,

to which we are treated under the name of fried potatoes in America?

In our cities the restaurants are introducing the French article to

great acceptance, and to the vindication of the fair fame of this queen

of vegetables.

Finally, we arrive at the last great head of our subject, to wit--

_Tea_--meaning thereby, as before observed, what our Hibernian

friend did in the inquiry, "Will y'r honor take 'tay tay' or coffee

tay?"

We are not about to enter into the merits of the great tea-and-coffee

controversy, further than in our general caution concerning them in

the chapter on Healthful Drinks; but we now proceed to treat of them

as actual existences, and speak only of the modes of making the best

of them. The French coffee is reputed the best in the world; and a

thousand voices have asked, What is it about the French coffee?

In the first place, then, the French coffee is coffee, and not chickory,

or rye, or beans, or peas. In the second place, it is freshly roasted,

whenever made--roasted with great care and evenness in a little

revolving cylinder which makes part of the furniture of every kitchen,

and which keeps in the aroma of the berry. It is never overdone, so

as to destroy the coffee-flavor, which is in nine cases out of tent

the fault of the coffee we meet with. Then it is ground, and placed

in a coffee-pot with a filter through which, when it has yielded up

its life to the boiling water poured upon it, the delicious extract

percolates in clear drops, the coffee-pot standing on a heated stove

to maintain the temperature. The nose of the coffee-pot is stopped up

to prevent the escape of the aroma during this process. The extract

thus obtained is a perfectly clear, dark fluid, known as _caf

noir_, or black coffee. It is black only because of its strength,

being in fact almost the very essential oil of coffee. A table-spoonful

of this in boiled milk would make what is ordinarily called a strong

cup of coffee. The boiled milk is prepared with no less care. It must

be fresh and new, not merely warmed or even brought to the

boiling-point, but slowly simmered till it attains a thick, creamy

richness. The coffee mixed with this, and sweetened with that sparkling

beet-root sugar which ornaments a French table, is the celebrated

_cafe-au-lait_, the name of which has gone round the world.

As we look to France for the best coffee, so we must look to England

for the perfection of tea. The tea-kettle is as much an English

institution as aristocracy or the Prayer-Book; and when one wants to

know exactly how tea should he made, one has only to ask how a fine

old English house-keeper makes it.

The first article of her faith is, that the water must not merely be

hot, not merely _have boiled_ a few moments since, but be actually

_boiling_ at the moment it touches the tea. Hence, though servants

in England are vastly better trained than with us, this delicate mystery

is seldom left to their hands. Tea-making belongs to the drawing-room,

and high-born ladies preside at "the bubbling and loud hissing urn,"

and see that all due rites and solemnities are properly performed--that

the cups are hot, and that the infused tea waits the exact time before

the libations commence.

Of late, the introduction of English breakfast-tea has raised a new

sect among the tea-drinkers, reversing some of the old canons.

Breakfast-tea must be boiled! Unlike the delicate article of olden

time, which required only a momentary infusion to develop its richness,

this requires a longer and severer treatment to bring out its

strength--thus confusing all the established usages, and throwing the

work into the hands of the cook in the kitchen. The faults of tea, as

too commonly found at our hotels and boarding-houses, are, that it

is made in every way the reverse of what it should be. The water is

hot, perhaps, but not boiling; the tea has a general flat, stale, smoky

taste, devoid of life or spirit; and it is served usually with thin

milk, instead of cream. Cream is an essential to the richness of tea

as of coffee. Lacking cream, boiled milk is better than cold.

Chocolate is a French and Spanish article, and one seldom served on

American tables. We in America, however, make an article every way

equal to any which can be imported from Paris, and he who buys the

best vanilla-chocolate may rest assured that no foreign land can furnish

any thing better. A very rich and delicious beverage may be made by

dissolving this in milk, slowly boiled down after the French fashion.

A word now under the head of _Confectionery_, meaning by this the

whole range of ornamental cookery--or pastry, ices, jellies, preserves,

etc. The art of making all these very perfectly is far better understood

in America than the art of common cooking. There are more women who

know how to make good cake than good bread--more who can furnish you

with a good ice-cream than a well-cooked mutton-chop; a fair

charlotte-russe is easier to gain than a perfect cup of coffee; and

you shall find a sparkling jelly to your dessert where you sighed in

vain for so simple a luxury as a well-cooked potato.

Our fair countrywomen might rest upon their laurels in these higher

fields, and turn their great energy and ingenuity to the study of

essentials. To do common things perfectly is far better worth our

endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably. We Americans in many

things as yet have been a little inclined to begin making our shirt

at the ruffle; but, nevertheless, when we set about it, we can make

the shirt as nicely as any body; it needs only that we turn our

attention to it, resolved that, ruffle or no ruffle, the shirt we will

have.

A few words as to the prevalent ideas in respect to French cookery.

Having heard much of it, with no very distinct idea of what it is, our

people have somehow fallen into the notion that its _forte_ lies in high

spicing--and so when our cooks put a great abundance of clove, mace,

nutmeg, and cinnamon into their preparations, they fancy that they are

growing up to be French cooks. But the fact is, that the Americans and

English are far more given to spicing than the French. Spices in our

made dishes are abundant, and their taste is strongly pronounced. Living

a year in France one forgets the taste of nutmeg, clove, and allspice,

which abounds in so many dishes in America. The English and Americans

deal in _spices_, the French in _flavors_--flavors many and flue,

imitating often in their delicacy those subtle blendings which nature

produces in high-flavored fruits. The recipes of our cookery-books are

most of them of English origin, coming down from the times of our

phlegmatic ancestors, when the solid, burly, beefy growth of the foggy

island required the heat of fiery condiments, and could digest heavy

sweets. Witness the national recipe for plum-pudding: which may be

rendered: Take a pound of every indigestible substance you can think of,

boil into a cannon-ball, and serve in flaming brandy. So of the

Christmas mince-pie, and many other national dishes. But in America,

owing to our brighter skies and more fervid climate, we have developed

an acute, nervous delicacy of temperament far more akin to that of

France than of England.

Half of the recipes in our cook-books are mere murder to such

constitutions and stomachs as we grow here. We require to ponder these

things, and think how we, in our climate and under our circumstances,

ought to live; and in doing so, we may, without accusation of foreign

foppery, take some leaves from many foreign books.

XIV.

EARLY RISING

There is no practice which has been more extensively eulogized in all

ages than early rising; and this universal impression is an indication

that it is founded on true philosophy. For it is rarely the case that

the common sense of mankind fastens on a practice as really beneficial,

especially one that demands self-denial, without some substantial

reason.

This practice, which may justly be called a domestic virtue, is one

which has a peculiar claim to be styled American and democratic. The

distinctive mark of aristocratic nations is a disregard of the great

mass, and a disproportionate regard for the interests of certain

privileged orders. All the customs and habits of such a nation are,

to a greater or less extent, regulated by this principle. Now the mass

of any nation must always consist of persons who labor at occupations

which demand the light of day. But in aristocratic countries, especially

in England, labor is regarded as the mark of the lower classes, and

indolence is considered as one mark of a gentleman. This impression

has gradually and imperceptibly, to a great extent, regulated their

customs, so that, even in their hours of meals and repose, the higher

orders aim at being different and distinct from those who, by laborious

pursuits, are placed below them. From this circumstance, while the

lower orders labor by day and sleep at night, the rich, the noble, and

the honored sleep by day, and follow their pursuits and pleasures by

night.

It will be found that the aristocracy of London breakfast near midday,

dine after dark, visit and go to Parliament between ten and twelve at

night, and retire to sleep toward morning. In consequence of this, the

subordinate classes who aim at gentility gradually fall into the same

practice. The influence of this custom extends across the ocean, and

here, in this democratic land, we find many who measure their grade

of gentility by the late hour at which they arrive at a party. And

this aristocratic folly is growing upon us, so that, throughout the

nation, the hours for visiting and retiring are constantly becoming

later, while the hours for rising correspond in lateness.

The question, then, is one which appeals to American women, as a matter

of patriotism and as having a bearing on those great principles of

democracy which we conceive to be equally the principles of

Christianity. Shall we form our customs on the assumption that labor

is degrading and indolence genteel? Shall we assume, by our practice,

that the interests of the great mass are to be sacrificed for the

pleasures and honors of a privileged few? Shall we ape the customs of

aristocratic lands, in those very practices which result from principles

and institutions that we condemn? Shall we not rather take the place

to which we are entitled, as the leaders, rather than the followers,

in the customs of society, turn back the tide of aristocratic inroads,

and carry through the whole, not only of civil and political but of

social and domestic life, the true principles of democratic freedom

and equality? The following considerations may serve to strengthen an

affirmative decision.

The first relates to the health of a family. It is a universal law of

physiology, that all living things flourish best in the light.

Vegetables, in a dark cellar, grow pale and spindling. Children brought

up in mines are always wan and stunted, while men become pale and

cadaverous who live under ground. This indicates the folly of losing

the genial influence which the light of day produces on all animated

creation.

Sir James Wylie, of the Russian imperial service, states that in the

soldiers' barracks, three times as many were taken sick on the shaded

side as on the sunny side; though both sides communicated, and

discipline, diet, and treatment were the same. The eminent French

surgeon, Dupuytren, cured a lady whose complicated diseases baffled

for years his own and all other medical skill, by taking her from a

dark room to an abundance of daylight.

Florence Nightingale writes: "Second only to fresh air in importance

for the sick is light. Not only daylight but direct sunlight is

necessary to speedy recovery, except in a small number of cases.

Instances, almost endless, could be given where, in dark wards, or

wards with only northern exposure, or wards with borrowed light, even

when properly ventilated, the sick could not be, by any means, made

speedily to recover."

In the prevalence of cholera, it was invariably the case that deaths

were more numerous in shaded streets or in houses having only northern

exposures than in those having sunlight. Several physicians have stated

to the writer that, in sunny exposures, women after childbirth gained

strength much faster than those excluded from sunlight. In the writer's

experience, great nervous debility has been always immediately lessened

by sitting in the sun, and still more by lying on the earth and in

open air, a blanket beneath, and head and eyes protected, under the

direct rays of the sun.

Some facts in physiology and natural philosophy have a bearing on this

subject. It seems to be settled that the red color of blood is owing

to iron contained in the red blood-cells, while it is established as

a fact that the sun's rays are metallic, having "vapor of iron" as one

element. It is also true that want of light causes a diminution of the

red and an increase of the imperfect white blood-cells, and that this

sometimes results in a disease called _leucoemia_, while all who

live in the dark have pale and waxy skins, and flabby, weak muscles.

Thus it would seem that it is the sun that imparts the iron and color

to the blood. These things being so, the customs of society that bring

sleeping hours into daylight, and working and study hours into the

night, are direct violations of the laws of health. The laws of health

are the laws of God, and "sin is the transgression of law."

To this we must add the great neglect of economy as well as health in

substituting unhealthful gaslight, poisonous, anthracite warmth, for

the life-giving light and warmth of the sun. Millions and millions

would be saved to this nation in fuel and light, as well as in health,

by returning to the good old ways of our forefathers, to rise with the

sun, and retire to rest "when the bell rings for nine o'clock."

The observations of medical men, whose inquiries have been directed

to this point, have decided that from six to eight hours is the amount

of sleep demanded by persons in health. Some constitutions require as

much as eight, and others no more than six hours of repose. But eight

hours is the maximum for all persons in ordinary health, with ordinary

occupations. In cases of extra physical exertions, or the debility of

disease, or a decayed constitution, more than this is required. Let

eight hours, then, be regarded as the ordinary period required for

sleep by an industrious people like the Americans.

It thus appears that the laws of our political condition, the laws ofthe

natural world, and the constitution of our bodies, alike demand

that we rise with the light of day to prosecute our employments, and

that we retire in time for the requisite amount of sleep.

In regard to the effects of protracting the time spent in repose, many

extensive and satisfactory investigations have been made. It has been

shown that, during sleep, the body perspires most freely, while yet

neither food nor exercise are ministering to its wants. Of course, if

we continue our slumbers beyond the time required to restore the body

to its usual vigor, there is an unperceived undermining of the

constitution, by this protracted and debilitating exhalation. This

process, in a course of years, readers the body delicate and less able

to withstand disease, and in the result shortens life. Sir John

Sinclair, who has written a large work on the Causes of Longevity,

states, as one result of his extensive investigations, that he has

never yet heard or read of a single case of great longevity where the

individual was not an early riser. He says that he has found cases in

which the individual has violated some one of all the other laws of

health, and yet lived to great age; but never a single instance in

which any constitution has withstood that undermining consequent on

protracting the hours of repose beyond the demands of the system.

Another reason for early rising is, that it is indispensable to a

systematic and well-regulated family. At whatever hour the parents

retire, children and domestics, wearied by play or labor, must retire

early. Children usually awake with the dawn of light, and commence

their play, while domestics usually prefer the freshness of morning

for their labors. If, then, the parents rise at a late hour, they

either induce a habit of protracting sleep in their children and

domestics, or else the family are up, and at their pursuits, while

their supervisors are in bed.

Any woman who asserts that her children and domestics, in the first

hours of day, when their spirits are freshest, will be as well regulated

without her presence as with it, confesses that which surely is little

for her credit. It is believed that any candid woman, whatever may be

her excuse for late rising, will concede that if she could rise early

it would be for the advantage of her family. A late breakfast puts

back the work, through the whole day, for every member of a family;

and if the parents thus occasion the loss of an hour or two to each

individual who, but for their delay in the morning, would be usefully

employed, they alone are responsible for all this waste of time.

But the practice of early rising has a relation to the general interests

of the social community, as well as to that of each distinct family.

All that great portion of the community who are employed in business

and labor find it needful to rise early; and all their hours of meals,

and their appointments for business or pleasure, must be accommodated

to these arrangements. Now, if a small portion of the community

establish very different hours, it makes a kind of jostling in all the

concerns and interests of society. The various appointments for the

public, such as meetings, schools, and business hours, must be

accommodated to the mass, and not to individuals. The few, then, who

establish domestic habits at variance with the majority, are either

constantly interrupted in their own arrangements, or else are

interfering with the rights and interests of others. This is exemplified

in the case of schools. In families where late rising is practiced,

either hurry, irregularity, and neglect are engendered in the family,

or else the interests of the school, and thus of the community, are

sacrificed. In this, and many other matters, it can be shown that the

well-being of the bulk of the people is, to a greater or less extent,

impaired by this self-indulgent practice. Let any teacher select the

unpunctual scholars--a class who most seriously interfere with the

interests of the school--and let men of business select those who cause

them most waste of time and vexation, by unpunctuality; and it will

be found that they are generally among the late risers, and rarely

among those who rise early. Thus, late rising not only injures the

person and family which indulge in it, but interferes with the rights

and convenience of the community; while early rising imparts

corresponding benefits of health, promptitude, vigor of action, economy

of time, and general effectiveness both to the individuals who practice

it and to the families and community of which they are a part.