CONSERVATION OF HEALTH 233 



sleep, a dash of harmless amusement and recrea- 

 tion, never kills any man, woman or child. It is 

 only the incessant work amid conditions that 

 breeds disease, without food properly cooked for 

 eating, and without the period of relaxation and 

 rest, that kills. The author has seen the young 

 farmer and wife, even on a farm of 160 or more 

 acres, arise at the unseemly hour of four o'clock 

 in the morning, rousing out the young family of 

 six or more children, putting them to work in the 

 preparation of the breakfast, feeding of the stock, 

 harnessing of work horses, etc., then sitting down 

 to a quickly and illy prepared breakfast, gulping 

 it down in haste ; then the father hurrying the boys 

 to the field long before the morning light had lit 

 up the landscape, where, with broken rest and 

 tired bodies, they listlessly toiled until the dinner 

 hour. The mother would hurry the girls to the 

 milking, the care of the house, poultry and the 

 garden, they toiling under the same conditions of 

 broken rest and tired bodies. The dinner and 

 supper hour were but the repetition of the hurly- 

 burly of the morning. Work in the fields and 

 household extended far into the fading twilight. 

 Chores about the house and barn were done by 

 lamp light. The beds were sought by tired, un- 

 relaxed bodies, who secured but a fitful sleep, only 

 to be awakened for the same daily monotonous 

 grind. A few years, including both winter and 

 summer of this kind of cruel living bent and 

 wrinkled the once blitheful, pretty body and face of 

 the mother, made her body an easy prey of disease 

 and she was stricken with an untimely death. She 

 would be laid among the weeds and brush growth 



