[Illustration: LUNCH-HOUR IN AN INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL.]
How would you like the idea of a school restaurant of your own, little folks? On the bill of fare we would have every day nice hot soup, good home-made bread, both white and brown, baked potatoes, apple sauce, rice pudding, crisp celery, cold ham, and ripe fruit, served at the order of the pupil-diner, at a daily cost of a few cents. We think there are clever women who could manage such an enterprise so that it would pay them very fair profits, and we are sure that if mammas and papas were consulted, they would consider it an economy to have their children well fed every day. It would save an immense amount in doctors' bills to some households.
That wonderful machine, the human body, is not unlike a stove, in which the fire will not keep on burning cheerily unless it is replenished from time to time with fuel. Now the very worst fuel in the world for the human stove is composed of pickles on the one hand, and creams and confections on the other. If the brain is to perform its high offices as it ought, the stomach must receive due attention.
After a comfortable luncheon at the school restaurant, we should advise the boys and girls to petition for a half-hour of merry play out-of-doors in pleasant weather. Snow-balling, coasting, and skating would not be amiss, for after the rapid exercise the mind would return to study not jaded and tired, but fresh and vigorous. In stormy weather a dance or a half-hour of calisthenics would set the blood to merry motion in the veins, and we would not see children coming home from school at four irritable and cross, or so often hear the family doctor say, "You must take that child from school."
We would just remind fathers and mothers that at present the only children who are sure of a good dinner at noon are the little waifs who go to the industrial schools, and for whom charity provides at least one hearty meal a day.
[Illustration: MID-DAY DINNER IN THE SCHOOL RESTAURANT.--DRAWN BY MRS. JESSIE SHEPHERD.]
This charming head is from a beautiful oil-painting by the great French painter Greuze, who a century ago was famous for depicting little folks with his brush and pencil.
Jean Baptiste Greuze was born in 1725 at Tournus, a little manufacturing town in the Department of Saône-et-Loire, in the south of France. From his early boyhood he developed the inclination and taste for art which later made him one of the first of French painters. His first studies were made in Lyons, a great manufacturing centre, not very far from his native town. From Lyons he went to Paris, and was so successful that he was enabled to fulfill his ambition of visiting Rome, where he pursued his studies for a considerable period.