42 The Bulletin. 



great responsibility her work is not always appreciated as it sboulcl be — often 

 not even by herself. Perhaps this can be illustrated by the following inci- 

 dent related at an Illinois institute and which probably has a parallel in the 

 experiences of some of you. Who of you has not often heard the mother of- 

 the home say she was not earning any money, in this way speaking disparag- 

 ingly of her own important work? 



A man chanced to meet a certain boy who was unduly proud of the fact that 

 he was earning regular wages and supporting himself. He entered into a 

 conversation with the boy, which ran something like this : 



"Yes," said the boy, "I make $3 a week ; Mary is in the store and she earns 

 $5 ; I don't know how much father earns ; and Ted and Jim, they don't earn 

 anything — they just go to school." 



"And do you board at home?" asked the man. 



"Oh, yes ; we eat breakfast and supper there, and mother puts up our din- 

 ners for us." 



"Yes, I see; who gets the breakfast and does the other cooking?" 



"Mother." 



"Who washes for you?" 



"She does." 



"Do you keep a girl?" 



"No. we don't need one. Besides, we couldn't afford one, anyhow." 



"Does your mother do all the work for the whole family?" 



"Why, yes, of course." 



"Does she sew and mend for all of you, too?" 



"Well, I should say she did. We never hire help for anything." 



"You say you get $3 every week and Mary $5. What does your mother 

 get?" 



"Mother ! Why she don't work ; she just stays at home ; she don't get any- 

 thing." 



The mother's services were evidently necessary, but no money value was 

 placed upon her work. It was taken as a matter of course that she should 

 be cook, nurse, sew and be a regular Jack at all trades and good at all. The 

 woman has a gi'eat, God-given responsibility, when the health of a family is 

 placed in her hands. 



In the consideration of this subject some of the essential things are the 

 relation of air, water, foods, cleanliness, and rest to our bodies. 



Air comes first, because without it we can live only a very few minutes. 

 Our lungs need pure air all the time. If we are content with shallow breath- 

 ing, we are content to have poisons in our bodies. In the lungs there is an 

 exchange of oxygen and of waste products between the air and the blood. 

 When we breathe just from the chest, the blood in the lower part of the luugs 

 has to go back to its work without a sufficient supply of oxygen. Besides, we 

 have to keep all parts of the lungs exercised to keep them in working order, 

 so they can resist attacks from consumption and other lung diseases. There 

 is a right way to breathe and a wrong way. Naturally, we breathe through 

 the nose; but if this passage is blocked, we are forced to breathe through the 

 mouth. Almost always mouth breathing in children is caused by the growth 

 of adenoids, a superficial growth of the mucous membrane. Many evils fol- 

 low in the wake of adenoids. The air gets to the lungs by a shorter route, 

 therefore it is not so well sifted by the minute hair-like projections in the 

 nasal passage, and does not have the same chance to reach the body tempera- 

 ture. The child's face becomes deformed, and has an unnatural shape, and 

 often the child becomes partially deaf. In later life asthma is likely to 

 develop. So just as soon as you notice that your child breathes through the 

 mouth habitually, take him to a physician for examination. 



Adenoids are not new-fangled, but are as old as asthma ; but thanks to 

 medical science, they can be eliminated. We want the children to breathe 

 properly, as Nature intended. The air we breathe is about one-fifth oxygen. 

 In breathing we extract part of the oxygen from the air and give out car- 

 bonic acid gas in its place. This gas is a deadly poison to our bodies. So we 



