an hour or two later than the usual time, invariably undermines the best digestion, in time. Every individual ought to consider the hour for meals a sacred one, not to be intruded upon by any ordinary cir

cumstances.

Children should be taught to be regular at their meals, and to take nothing between meals. This rule applies to infants as well as to older children. The practice of feeding the little one every time it cries is a most serious injury to its weak digestive organs. An infant's stomach, though it needs food at more frequent intervals,-two to four hours according to its age,-requires the same regularity which is essential to the maintenance of healthy digestion in older persons. The irregularity usually practiced is undoubtedly one of the greatest causes of the fearful mortality of infants from disorders of the digestive organs, as appears in our mortuary reports.

The habit of over-eating is also responsible for a large proportion of sickness.

When more food is taken into the stomach than can be appropriated for the purpose of growth, repair, and functional activity, all the organs of digestion, assimilation, and excretion are overtaxed to dispose of this superfluity. Additional labor is put upon the kidneys, lungs, and other excretory organs, to eliminate unused material which has served no end in the human economy. And this strain long continued leads to an impairment of vigor, and not infrequently to chronic disorders which puzzle the best of physicians to overcome.

It is, therefore, a waste of energy to over-eat. But how many persons are tempted to gratify the palate long after the demands of hunger have been satisfied! It is from this class that a large percentage of invalids is recruited.

Very often the effort required in taking care of so much more food. than is necessary overtaxes the whole system. A smaller quantity of nourishing food, which could be readily digested and assimilated, would give an increase of flesh and a more symmetrical roundness to the whole body. An abnormal amount of flesh, above one's average weight, is an indication of ill-health, and it may be accompanied by extreme weakness and inability to work or exercise.

We should eat to live, and not live to eat. Decide what and how much you, as an individual, need, and take that and nothing more. Put your bodily desires under the direction of the spirit, which should always hold the mastery if you hope to have health or happiness.

The average American really dines three times daily, with his beefsteak breakfast, chops for lunch, and roast beef at his dinner. And he does it at his peril, for this habit of over-feeding, especially of eating so much meat, is one of the provoking causes of so many sudden illnesses and premature deaths.

Americans are a nation of brain workers, and cannot indulge safely in high living. High thinking, or the constant use of the brain in any direction, calls for a plain but nourishing diet. Brain workers, especially, ought to live sparingly.

For the aged, or even for those above fifty, luxurious living and over-eating are specially dangerous. As functional activity lessens with increasing years, the supply of food should be decreased accordingly. An over-amount, that might be borne without disturbance in earlier years, often proves fatal in old age.

The hardiest races live on the simplest fare.

THE WASTE OF THE HOUSEHOLD.

Mr. Edward Atkinson, if not exactly making two blades of grass grow where one grew before, like Dr. Johnson's typical benefactor, is trying hard to make $1 in food preparation do the work of $2, which would be a great deal better. He declares in a recent publication the cost of food material absorbs half of the income of nine-tenths of our people; the waste of food exceeds cost of all the cloth made in our factories; and that we consume a pound of coal for every pound of food that is cooked for our breakfast and dinner tables. We cook in the United States, he says, at least $3,000,000,000 worth of meat, fish, grain and vegetables in a year, and of that sum we lose $1,000,000,000 by bad cookery.

Being a light eater, and subsisting on $1 a week for food alone, Mr. Atkinson prefers the oil or gas stove to the ponderous "range" or " cookstove," which he thinks an invention of Satan. He adds this calculation I gave a seven-course dinner to my whist club friends, including oranges and coffee, which cost 13 cents each for the food material. I gave a dinner of four courses, soup, fish, meat and vegetables, and mush with molasses for desert, to nine of the poorer students at Harvard who want to economize; there were also three others; each had a pound and a half of strong food and the cost of twelve was 61 cents.

And

yet the authorities made us pay $1 each for our commencement dinner of four courses a month ago !

The miracle of the five loaves and two small fishes is not repeated yet by Mr. Atkinson, but he is making approaches towards it. He says, and no doubt very truly, that a laborer whose wife knows how to choose meat as well as to cook it, can live on $1 a week, and much better than the average man fares, though this would compel her to buy the poorer kinds of beef. But for $2 a week the laboring man can buy the best, always excepting canvass-back ducks and tenderloin beef; and that, in Boston, a hard-working man can live well for 20 cents a day, and a woman at 134 cents. I have no doubt of this, for I know a family which lives better than most persons, so far as food goes, for $1.11 a week, cooking included. But this requires great care and intelligence in buying and preparing the food.—Boston Advertiser.

OATMEAL AS A FOOD.

Oatmeal has recently received some adverse criticisms. This is not surprising, as no food article is just the thing in every case and at all times. Our daily experience convinces us of such truth by likes and dislikes of very common and most wholesome foods. It is natural and best to have some variation of diet. A thing may be just adapted to the state of the individual-bodily and mentally-while with another, it may never agree. Without entering into a lengthy and uninteresting details, chemistry, physiology and experience all prove oatmeal one of the most valuable cereal foods for producing good muscles and clear heads. But it is frequently found to disagree. Being used almost exclusively as mush, it is swallowed so easily that it is not properly mixed with the saliva-the first step for digestion. When there is little or no saliva, as in some diseases, the digestion must necessarily be very weak. A good authority says: "No saliva, no digestion." "No saliva, no digestion." If any soft food, mush, toast, etc., is swallowed too rapidly, or any food is washed down with tea, coffee, milk, beer, wine or water, some degree of indigestion is thereby produced sooner or later, as often shown by a sense of fullness, discomfort, belching and other disturbances. If there is a lack of saliva, or that of proper quality, it is often best to eat some hard kind of bread, as thin, hard, Scotch oatmeal bread, bread crusts, rusks, etc., very slowly, and thus naturally increase the amount and quality of the saliva. Such a course is often a better and safer corrective than drugs

and nostrums. Good health should be secured by correct living. The best physicians are those who recognize this fact and try to teach it to their patients. Oatmeal can be used in a variety of ways. As mush, it is often drowned in too much milk, sugar and butter, for good digestion; is swallowed so easily that it helps lead to overeating and its bad results. Let us go slow before we reject oatmeal as a food.

OVERSTRUNG NERVES.

It is not the work but the worry which kills. There is no tonic for the body like regular work of the mind, though this is unfortunately not often appreciated or not allowed by the physicians to whom anxious mothers take their growing daughters. There is nothing so sure to steady the nerves of the fretful and excitable child as regular school work in the hands of a real teacher. Many a child who is celebrated for dangerous fits of temper at home becomes entirely transformed under the influence of such a school, till her nearest relatives would not recognize her if they should ever take the time and trouble to visit the school-room. I do not mean a school-room full of competitive examinations, of "marks," and of irrelevant inducements to make the child commit to memory a mass of unrelated and undigested facts. I mean one where, without any inducement but the natural desire for knowledge, which is all-sufficient with any American child if it be rightly directed, you find steady and well ordered labor, without haste, though not without rest, and honest, thorough, and pleasurable work.

We may learn a lesson from this fact-for it is no theory-of the effect of regular work on our tired nerves, and wise shall we be if we apply it. Even the most consistent homœopathic physician could not object to this kind of tonic; though he would tell you, and truly, that tonics are worse than of no use for overworked nerves.

FOOD FOR DYSPEPTICS.

I wish to tell the sufferer from a weak stomach how to cook some things which a dyspeptic can eat. Four years ago my husband was almost helpless with dyspepsia. He consulted two doctors from whom he learned that he could 'not live a year.' Every thing he ate caused great pain, until he tried a fresh egg, well beaten with a little sugar, a

the chest for a week longer, which treatment seems to prevent taking cold easily again.-M. Sanford.

AN INSECT WORTH MILLIONS.

The cottony cushion scale, says the Indiana Farmer, has been for years the greatest enemy to the orange grower of California. It was brought there from Australia in 1868, on trees and shrubs imported from that country, and spread and multiplied till it promised soon to devastate the entire orange growing regions of the State. A fruit grower near San Francisco, under the belief that there must be a parasite for the insect in the country from which it came, went to Australia, and after due investigation, made the expected discovery. It was the lady-bird, the Vedalia cardinalis, he found to be the principal enemy of the cottony cushion scale, and he captured and shipped several colonies of beetles and their larvæ to California.

This was the fall of 1888. According to bulletin No. 54 of the California State Board of Horticulture, so rapid was their increase that by December 1, 1889, the work of exterminating the cottony cushion scale was practically accomplished. The money value of this Vedalia to the orange growers of the State has been incalculable. The saving

of the orchards already infested, the protecting of the others that were sure to be blighted by this terrible curse, to say nothing of perpetuating an industry that it seems will be the king of all horticultural pursuits, is simply grand, and cannot be estimated in the usual dollar and cent test.

WEDDING RINGS.

You want to know why the ring is used as a matrimonial pledge? said a learned Smithsonian curator to a Washington Star writer. The reason is very well known. It is employed as a token of good faith because the ring was originally and primarily a seal. In ancient Babylon, 4,000 years ago, all documents were attested by seals, as they are now, and the merchants very usually wore their seals on their finger-rings of gold and other metals. With these signets they impressed their own private and particular devices upon the agreements and contracts of all sorts, thus making them good and binding. Documents in those days were not written upon paper, but with a