MENTAL AND PHYSICAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 215 



ing in a hospital, no matter how you ventilate the wards, a high 

 death-rate is the inevitable result, and in the nursery depressed 

 vitality and sickliness as certainly follow upon want of room 

 and air. One thousand cubic feet is not too much to allow for 

 each person. 



No nurseries should be papered unless the paper is varnished, 

 for, besides the great risk of putting up an arsenical paper, there 

 is this to be considered that children are certain to go through 

 some infectious illnesses, after each of which the nurseries must 

 be disinfected and repapered. The best thing for the walls is 

 paint, which can always be washed and disinfected with little 

 trouble, and once on the walls will last for years. Distemper color 

 is the alternative to paint, but with it a dado of paint or varnished 

 paper should be used, as it comes off when touched or rubbed. 

 Distemper should be renewed every year, or after any infectious 

 disease. Nothing that can hold dust should be allowed in the 

 nursery. There should be no carpet nailed down over the floor ; 

 it can not be taken up sufficiently often to keep the room sweet, 

 and the accumulation of dust under such a carpet is astonishing. 

 Directly the children begin to romp, the room becomes most un- 

 wholesome with its dust-laden atmosphere, flavored by the many 

 mugs of milk that have been spilt, and the many pieces of bread 

 and butter that have been dropped face downward on the carpet 

 during the past year. But I have not space to do more than point 

 out some few things to be avoided, and must as far as possible 

 keep to generalities. 



Our lords and masters arrange the diet of dogs and horses with 

 great care ; whether the dog should be fed on meat or farinaceous 

 foods, whether the horses should be turned out to grass or fed 

 upon oats or hay, are momentous questions. Any one having 

 the management of horses will notice that a highly fed animal 

 will be able to do a much larger amount of work than one that is 

 stinted and underfed ; that a horse fed upon corn is full of spirit, 

 while if turned out to grass it becomes lazy and sleepy, thus prov- 

 ing that food materially affects the spirit and disposition of the 

 animal. And if this be true for one animal, it will be true for all ; 

 and it follows that the superior animal the child will be equally 

 affected by variations in food, and will require as much care in 

 feeding. 



This will hardly be disputed, and yet very rarely is any sys- 

 tem followed in feeding children, and if an ordinary fairly edu- 

 cated man were asked to consider the diet of his children, and 

 whether such a diet might not be found which would develop to 

 its utmost the physical powers of each child, he would probably 

 reply that, when he was young, children ate what was put before 

 them, and were none the worse for it. Now, it is impossible to 



