I fear it is still necessary to teach and preach that nobody has a right to health who does not wash all over every day. This is done with infants; and the practice should never be discontinued. Every child of a family should look upon this daily complete washing in cold water as a thing as completely of course as getting its breakfast. There was a time, within my remembrance, when even respectable people thought it enough to wash their feet once a week; and their whole bodies when they went to the coast for sea-bathing in August. In regard to popular knowledge of the Laws of Health, our world _has_ got on: and, after the expositions, widely published, of those who enable us to understand the Laws of Health, we may hope that washing from head to foot is so regular an affair with all decent people as to leave no doubt or irresolution in children's minds about how much they shall wash, any day of the year.--As for the care of the teeth,--parents ought to know that, in the opinion of dentists, all decay of the teeth proceeds from the bone of which the teeth are composed not being kept purely clean and bright. This happens oftenest when teeth overlap, or grow so that every part cannot be reached. Much of this may be remedied, if not all of it, by early application to a dentist. But parents to whom this precaution is impossible can do much to save their children from future misery from toothache, and indigestion through loss of teeth, by seeing that the tooth-scrubbing is properly performed. This is more important than the polishing of knives and brass knockers.--As for the brushing of a girl's long hair, it really is a very irksome business till it becomes mechanical; and a mother may consider a little effort at amusement well bestowed till the habit of doing it properly is securely formed, and the mind is rich enough to entertain itself the while.
Readers begin to yawn or skip when they meet, in any book, with praises of early rising. Yet how can I pass over this particular of personal habits, when I think it of eminent importance?--I believe it is rare to see such early rising as I happen to think desirable. I believe it is rare to see families fairly at their daily work by eight o'clock,--after having had out-door exercise and breakfast; and this, every morning in the year. The variety of objects presented for the observation and enjoyment of children (and of everybody else) in the early morning hours, far surpasses that which can be seen at any other time of day. Even town-bred children can see more pure sky, and quieter streets, and the country seems to have come nearer. And in the country, there are more animals abroad,--more squirrels, more field mice, more birds, than at noon or in the evening. The rooks fly higher in the dawn than at any other time; the magpies are bolder and droller; the singing birds in the thickets beyond measure more gleeful; and one need not tell that this is the hour for the lark. All except very young children can keep themselves warm in the mid-winter mornings, and will enjoy the delight of being out under the stars, and watching the last fragment of the moon, hanging over the eastern horizon, clear and bright in the breaking dawn. When these children come in, warm, rosy, and hungry, at seven o'clock, or half-past, and sit down to their breakfast, they seem hardly of the same order of creatures with such as come sauntering down from their chambers, when their parents have half done their meal;--sauntering because they are tired with dressing, or have had bad dreams, and have not recovered their spirits. And what a difference it makes in the houses of rich and poor whether the breakfast things are standing about till nearly ten o'clock, or whether the family have by that time been at work for nearly two of the brightest, and freshest, and quietest, hours of the day!