he amount of attention that is devoted to the improvement of horses,
cattle, and sheep. For both men and women have begun to realize that
mentally and spiritually we are largely dependent on the co-operation
of a healthy body; hence there has arisen a certain school, not
inaptly designated "Muscular Christianity."

The physical welfare of a child is the first consideration forced
upon the mother. Long before the intellect dawns, long before it
knows good from evil, there is important work to do. A healthy, pure
dwelling-place is to be begun for the lofty guests of mind and
soul. Alas, how little has this been considered! How often have
great minds been cramped by sickly, dwarfed bodies! How often have
aspiring souls been bound by earthly fetters of irritating pain!

Who shall deliver children from the unwise indulgences, fanciful
theories, and inherited mistakes of their parents? This is not the
province of religion; a mother may be intensely religious, and at the
same time cruelly ignorant in the treatment of the child,--whom yet
she loves with all her heart.

When men and women lived simply and naturally Nature in a large
measure took care of her own; but in our artificial life we must seek
the aid of Science to find our way back to Nature. And if science has
been able to teach us how to improve our breed of horses, and bring to
a state of physical perfection our cattle and sheep, by simply
selecting nutriments, she can also give the seeking mother directions
for building up a strong and healthy body for the immortal soul to
tarry in and work from. For, humiliating as we may regard it, we
cannot battle off this fact of God, that the vital processes in
animals and men are substantially the same.

In the dietary of children the two great mistakes are over-feeding and
under-feeding; but of the two evils the last is the worst. Repletion
is less injurious than inanition; and according to my observation
gluttony is the vice of adults rather than of children. If they do
exceed, the cause may generally be traced to the fact that they have
suffered a long want of the article they revel in. For instance, if at
rare intervals candies and sweetmeats are within their reach, they do
generally make themselves sick with an over supply of them; but this
is but the Nemesis that ever follows unnatural deprivations of any
kind.

Nothing is more necessary to a child than sugar. Its love of it is not
so much to please its palate as t