her reason for cooking is that it either softens or crisps our
food so that we can chew it better and digest it more readily. You
know what a difference there is between trying to eat a raw potato and
a nice, mealy, well-baked one, or trying to eat popcorn before it is
popped and after.

Another good thing, too, cooking does, which is very important. It
kills any disease germs, or germs of decay, that may happen to have
got upon the food from dust or flies, or from careless, dirty
handling.

Of course, some of our food, such as apples and other ripe fruits, and
celery and lettuce and other green vegetables, we can eat raw and
digest quite well; but we should be careful to see that they have been
thoroughly washed with water that we know to be pure. Grocers often
have a careless way of putting fruit and vegetables out upon open
stands in front of the shop, or in open boxes or baskets inside the
store, and leaving them there all day. This is very dangerous, because
dust from the street, which contains horse manure and all sorts of
germs, may blow in upon them; flies, which have been eating garbage or
feeding at the mouths of sewers, may come in and crawl over them. You
ought to be very sure that anything that you are going to eat raw, or
without thorough cooking, has been well washed. And you ought to ask
your mother to speak to your grocer, if he is careless in this way,
and have him keep his fruit and vegetables, as well as sugar and
crackers and beans and dried fruit, either under glass or well
screened from flies and dust.

More important than almost anything else in good cookery is to keep
the food and the kitchen and the dishes and your hands perfectly clean
all the way through, so that nothing that will upset your digestion
can get into the food. After things are well cooked, it is very
important that they should be nicely served on clean dishes, on a
clean table cloth, with polished knives and shining spoons and forks.
This means not only that everything about the table and the food will
be perfectly clean and wholesome, but that you will enjoy eating it a
great deal more. And when you enjoy your food, you remember, your
stomach can _secrete_ the juice that is needed to digest it, very much
faster and better than when, as you say, you are just "poking it
down."

If you have a school kitchen and a lunch room, you can learn the best
way of cooking and serving things; and then, perhaps, you can do these
same th