SCHOOL DIETARIES. 591 



with home-made plum-cake, or marmalade or honey. Whenever pro- 

 curable, some salad-herb, such as lettuce, radish, etc., is given at this 

 meal, and always eaten with much relish. 



Supper at 8 p. m. (for senior boys only). Bread-and-butter, or 

 bread-and-cheese, or biscuit, or, where it may seem needed, a tumbler 

 of milk, or glass of beer and a meat sandwich. 



No hampers of eatables are allowed to be sent to the boys from 

 their friends, and no shop for the sale of sweets, etc., is allowed or ac- 

 cessible to the boys. 



This dietary seems to me so exactly what growing boys or girls 

 ought to have, and so often what they do not get, even at their own 

 homes, that it may appropriately serve as the text for a few remarks 

 on the usual dietaries of public and private schools. I will begin by 

 at once stating my belief as one who was himself at a private and a 

 public school, and who still sees a good deal of school-boys that 

 either in quality, quantity, variety, or frequency of meals, the dietary 

 of nearly every school I have known is more or less defective. 



The usually unvaried breakfast of tea or coffee (and these fluids too 

 often of a miserably thin description), with bread-and-butter, is a 

 meagre meal for a boy who has to break a twelve-hours' fast. It is 

 not enough for the robust, nor varied enough for the delicate. A good 

 basin of bread-and-milk, or milk-porridge, should always be allowed as 

 a substitute for tea or cofiee ; and the latter, when preferred, should 

 always be accompanied with some little extra, such as a bit of cold 

 meat, or bacon, or an egg sometimes one, sometimes the other, so as 

 to secure the utmost possible variety. Cofiee, by-the-way, should be 

 of good quality, strong enough to require copious dilution with milk, 

 and not the sloppy decoction of brown paper which it too often re- 

 sembles in taste, appearance, and nutritive value. 



Nearly all boys want something between breakfast and dinner, 

 about 1 1 o'clock. ; and if this something be not provided for them in a 

 wholesome form by the school-master, they will seek to get it, probably 

 in a much less wholesome form, at the school " shop," or in the con- 

 tents of the " hamper from home." Concerning these two venerable 

 institutions more shall be said presently. 



Meat or other food of bad quality is hardly ever put on the table 

 nowadays in any decent school. Equally rare is any stint in its allow- 

 ance. The fault of most school dinners is roughness in the cooking 

 and serving, insufficient variety in the form and kind of meat and 

 vegetables, and the too frequent absence of puddings. It will be seen 

 by the above dietary that, with very little strain of culinary arrange- 

 ments, meat may be served up in half a dozen different forms each 

 week, and, if two kinds of it always come to table, ample variety will 

 have been attained. Variety in food is no mere luxury or pampering 

 of appetite. In all cases desirable, in the case of growing boys it is 

 highly so ; while in the case of boys with delicate or capricious appe- 



