skirts. The lower one should have a loose flannel body, provided with buttons to which the second skirt can be attached. The gown in cold weather should be made of loosely woven wool. It should not fit too closely, so as to prevent proper expansion of the chest and abdomen in respiration. Any constriction of the waist and chest crowds the internal organs out of their normal position, presses downward on the abdomen, interferes with the abdominal and pelvic circulation, and causes a number of disturbances, especially of the pelvic organs. The length of the skirt in girls

under ten years of age need not be much below the knees. This will allow freedom in running. The collar of the winter gown should be a comfortable "stand up collar" (without stiffening) for children who are subject to cold in the throat. Deep ruffles and trimmings that come in the child's way when stooping over and at desk work should be avoided. The armholes and sleeves should be sufficiently large to allow for gymnastic exercises. The "bishop sleeve" is the most desirable for girls of school

age.

It would be difficult to estimate the number of young girls who owe their ill health to improper dress during childhood.

Importance of footwear.

The feet of children of both sexes should receive the same careful attention. Ordinarily high woolen hose are the best for winter. For summer, cotton hose are to be preferred. The stockings should be fastened to a supporter suspended from the shoulders. Delicate children who suffer with cold feet should have the stockinged foot wrapped with thin paper before it is put into the shoe, or they can wear two pairs of hose at the same time, or have cork insoles placed in their shoes. Stockings, as well as all woolen dark clothing, should be ventilated frequently. Children's underwear and stockings should be changed at least twice a week. There is a close relation between the warmth of the feet and the proper performance of the respiratory and digestive functions. Disturbances of these functions commonly follow the exposure of feet to wet and cold. A pupil with wet clothes or damp feet should never remain at school. Children who have no rain garments should remain at home on wet days.

One of the most important points of a child's clothing is his shoes. First of all, they should

fit the foot properly. The sole should be broader than the foot, and of sufficient thickness to insure protection from cold and wet, and at the same time must not be so stiff as to interfere with the elasticity of a child's foot. The shoe should be longer than the foot, as children's feet lengthen in walking. The fit across the instep should be smooth, but not too tight, as this obstructs the circulation of the foot and is one cause of cold feet. Outdoor wraps during the cold months. should wear leggings for additional protection Boys in knee pants and girls in short skirts

the knees. Girls need equestrian tights over to the lower limbs. They should reach above their drawers in going to and coming from school on bad days.

The night dress.

The health of the child depends also to a great degree on the night dress. Children should wear no clothes at night which are worn during the day. In winter flannel night gowns are indispensable. In summer they may be exchanged for muslin gowns, with an additional light weight gauze vest next to the body. Flannel absorbs moisture, muslin does so only very scantily, and the child should be protected from exposure by the gauze vest. Children are in constant activity; this is true both day and night. There are few children who do not toss the covering from them during the night. The lowest degree of bodily temperature is reached about 2 A. M., and if this time finds the child, uncovered and its gown under the arms, the body becomes chilled and a cold results. One means out of this difficulty is to make children's night gowns in the form of drawers. I cannot imagine a child comfortable in night drawers that has feet in them. It seems much better to put thin woolen hose on the feet of delicate children at night. Another way to overcome exposure is to make the night gown half a yard longer than the child. By means of a draw string the bottom may be drawn together loosely.

The play gown.

Young girls should be provided with play gowns. They should be loose-fitting, simply made, and of sufficient strength that children can enjoy their romps with Mother Nature without a thought of their clothes. Plan the gowns so that girls may be as free to play as

boys are in their trousers. Always remember that girls value pockets as highly as boys do. Especially in their play gowns, make them a generous, strong pocket, which can even hold pebbles.

An important matter in planning children's wardrobe is to bear in mind that the children are to wear the clothes. By all means, then, allow them to express their own tastes, and conform to their wishes whenever it can be done. Children, without doubt, have strong idiosyncrasies. Clashes between the mother and child are always injurious to the child. Government is not measurement of force. Children soon recognize oddities in dress. Their play fellows comment on such things, and, perhaps, even jeer them. This always mortifies a sensitive child, and may lead it to such isolation as will interfere with its development. Esthetic considerations.

I have considered dress so far chiefly from the hygienic standpoint. Health is indeed the most important object of dress. Yet, as a rule, it does not receive as much thought from mothers, when planning the child's wardrobe, as do æsthetic considerations. I have heard children called "the poetry of the home." This, no doubt, is true; but they are more than literature, more than art. For our constant

pleasure we are justified in exposing photographs to sunlight. No risk of fading is to be No risk of fading is to be taken with immortal souls. Most children love

The

to adorn their persons. They thoroughly enjoy pretty gowns and hats. This is a harmless pleasure as long as the beauty of the gown is not gained at the expense of comfort. child is sometimes taught not to mind little discomforts as long as its apparel looks pretty. It hears, "Your waist looks prettier when it fits closely." This gown looks prettier in tight sleeves." "Your skirts look prettier when down to your ankles." "It's the fashion." This is often a child's earliest training. Need we wonder that they follow in the footsteps of their mothers in being slaves to fashion? Some sweeping moralists hold that art has no place in dress; that ornamentation of the person is mere vanity. Women, from the ear liest times, have been severely criticised for introducing art in dress; indeed, one of these critics goes so far as to say that Mother Eve broke the laws of Paradise for an opportunity

to dress. No less an authority than Lessing states: "Necessity invented clothes, and what has art to do with necessity?" He holds that drapery is to hide defects! It is fortunate that we have a higher authority than even a Lessing. We can appeal to Mother Nature. She at every turn teaches us by example that the beautiful is not an unimportant part of existence. Certainly not in vanity has our Creator clothed this world so beautifully. The condition of the mind is manifested in its work. Beauty and pleasure are necessary for good work.

Negligence of dress in children is an actual injury to the normal development of their minds. Neatness and a sense of order cannot be developed without cultivation in the daily lives of children. The care and protection of the body affords the best opportunity for the growth of these virtues. Cleanliness of skin and clothing is the foundation of all æsthetic life. There is a close connection between clothes and the inner life, at least among the mass of people; some unusual exceptions may be found. Vulgarity, as well as refinement, may be manifested in dress. It is not always the one dressed in frills and rich laces who shows the best taste. As simplicity of speech and manner, freed from all affectation, shows the true character, so simplicity in dress, freed from gaudiness, indicates the refined taste.

All fashions that constrict any part of the body or interfere in any way with the healthy development of the child should be discarded. Aside from this one rule, few restrictions need be placed upon the tastes of our American mothers.

Modesty of dress, of course, should be observed. We have little need to find fault with young children's gowns in this respect. From present fashions for older young people, one might think it well to teach young children that beauty of dress is not lack of dress, and that exposure of shoulders, chest, and arms is a relic of barbarism, which speaks not well for the refinement of the person so unclad, or for the society that tolerates this "fashion." A higher estimate will be placed on the body when our children are taught to combine the healthful and modest with the beautiful in dress.

Need of more knowledge.

SOME plain information in behalf of the physical child has been asked for by the editor of THE NORTH WESTERN MONTHLY on the matter of stimulants and narcotics. To my demurrer that in the literature of temperance everything has been said that is worth saying, he grants that statement for a fact; but adds, "All who can read have not read." He believes that the interesting and informing articles have appeared mostly in the scientific and medical journals; that these and the temper. ance papers are not read to any great extent by the teachers of the land. So that the modernly scientific truths of temperance have not reached widely either the teachers or the public generally; have not been read, as a rule, by the leading educators.

The authority of science.

Science of to-day, which means nothing else than accurate observation, observation without forerunnning theory seeking its confirmation, long kept up, catholic in directions,-the eye fully open, and open to everything that can aid intelligence, has considerable to say about narcotics and stimulants as related to children. What it says is recent. And its tests and proofs have accumulated to an extent that must be satisfactory, once one makes them his own. Stimulants and narcotics have to do with children in three ways directly: (a) by determining to a considerable extent the entire organization and endowment of children, when the parents. of children use-indulge in-them; (b) by altering the physical and spiritual capital of the teachers who are impressing truth in general and themselves in particular on the children in their care; (c) by disturbing and distorting, or suppressing entirely, the development, on the way from childhood to manhood and womanhood, when the children themselves are led, or let drift, into the "use" of some of them, chiefly tea and coffee, and for boys, tobacco also. Origin of use.

Just how this series of poisons and drugs, euphoniously termed stimulants and narcotics, and resting so easily on the ear, comes so seriously into the cases of men, women, and chil

dren deserves a word from a modern psychological standpoint. Sometimes it is use that is made of them, or at least the sincerest intention of use, with belief that a use is realized. Much oftener it is a hearsay of use to be had, followed on into the region of fixed habit, with the actual results and sensations obtained either misunderstood or disregarded. Finally, we have the cases of indulgence pure and simple, and the endurance of miseries rather than a breaking with habits, whose yields of pleasure are but one to three of the pains. Illustrations.

late autumn, is upset a mile from land, and

Let us illustrate. A man out canoeing, in

his clothes and pushing the swamped canoe barely succeeds in reaching shore, swimming in ahead of him. Here, benumbed by the cold and quite exhausted, on a strip of Atlantic beach, with the nearest habitation a mile away, and night coming on, he would still, perhaps, have perished but for the aid of a flask of brandy which he drew from the hold of the canoe. This

gave him momentary strength, enough to reach

a habitation and the warmth that saved.

Had

he been compelled to spend the night on the beach the liquor, by its arrest of heat-production in the body, and its general depression of vital functions, would have enormously subtracted from his chance of survival. As it was, it was a case of real use, and as typical a one as occurs to us.

Take another. A physician, writing over his own name, recently states his belief that a cup of black coffee taken in bed an hour before rising awakens the bodily functions from torpor, ensures active digestion of breakfast, makes work easy, and is without bad after-effects; all this in his own case. But proof was not furnished that his morning "torpor" was unavoidable or without discoverable or removable cause; nor that more natural means would not

have removed it, if, indeed, it needed to be dispelled; nor yet that ultimately there was not a pay-day in his nervous structures for the drug action obtained by coffee. But he believed he obtained use.

Pass at once to a case illustrating a hearsay of use, followed quite into final disaster. A girl of unusual intellectual gifts, by great ef

forts raised the means and prepared herself for taking the full classical and philosophical courses at Ann Arbor. She passed through the first two years, standing high, and enduring the strain fairly well, though not a robust girl. In the third year she began to feel decided weariness, could scarcely keep awake evenings over her books, felt "dragged out" of mornings. Now had she stopped right there, lost that year of the course, and taken a "course" of one year in the woods, all might yet have been well, and she could in due time have come through with a diploma, and with some health, and gone on to her goal-a chair in some academy or high school as a teacher of a language. But just at that point where nature warned her best a foolish friend came in with her account of the bracing effects of plenty of hot coffee at breakfast. The advice was adopted, and it worked. The girl finished the year successfully. Then went home and sunk into lasting nervous prostration. Months of idleness brought no material gain. Her family before very long lost pa tience with her notions of an intellectual career, and pushed her into a marriage with an illiterate mechanic, for whom she obscurely keeps house to this day.

Use at or after meals.

In very many instances wine or beer at or be tween meals, and tobacco after meals, have been taken up habitually, either for use that in a very few cases seems actual, or for a use that is believed to exist, but has in application very poor proof; or on a hearsay of use, that is followed blindly and against actual experience of results, into most lamentable outcomes. But all three classes exist and must be frankly recognized. As for illustrations of indulgence in one or several of the narcotics and stimulants simply as indulgence, over three-fourths of the people of this country are such. Early public opinion.

Two things need to be taken into account, however, before we face this large class of sufferers with responsibility for this drugging and its effects. The public mind follows, in its way, the scientific mind of any age, at from twenty five to fifty years in the rear. This on an average. Now twenty-five years ago, except in a few remote hygienic corners of the field, alco holic stimulants in all conditions of depression had an undisputed place in standard medicine (not in homoeopathy). Fifty years ago their

position was supreme, and was surrounded with every honor. If there were observers who saw hen what is now seen, of danger and mischief in alcoholizing the majority of invalids, they were not the writers of standard works on medical practice, nor the chosen lecturers and neophant doctors. In the years back of the fifties we shortly arrive at the time when it was a frank and moderate admission to say that while the best health could not be maintained without the use of spirits, still a very fair, albeit monotonous degree of health was consistent with total abstinence!

Present-day ignorance.

How shall we wonder then if thousands of

partly educated persons to-day haven't heard it enhances the vital activities and forces; that seriously denied that brandy removes fatigue, and blood production; that smoking quiets the wine assists digestion; that beer favors flesh nerves and calms the stomach, or that a "good unmixed desirability and profitableness? Whiscup of coffee" is a start-me-up-in-the-morning of key or brandy are still used, and used well, to In snake bites strychnine has become a strong combat the poison generated in puerperal fever. rival. In threatened heart failure, at the crisis of some infectious diseases, alcoholics support for a very short time. But even here there are serious objections to their use undesirable effects-which have led many eminent physicians to resort to quite other means of arousing heart action. So that even from some large general hospitals alcoholics have been entirely banished. But all this the general public will not learn for a number of years. Still, when tired, chilly, depressed, or faint, some men, and women too, will continue to "take something" containing alcohol, in more or less faith that it will really relieve, instead of confirm, the above conditions.

Influence of general health.

The other palliating consideration for the indulgers is based on the fact that it is still only exceptional men and women who are made whole. I mean who are well filled in, and grown, in the full complement of body and soul forces that go to make the life endowment fairly complete and satisfactory to its possessor. The incomplete man cannot be fed within by the full consciousness of life. He craves it. He wearies of the incomplete consciousness. He would in weaker moments jump at this completion by

transitory stimulation, though sinking still further from fulness afterward. Or he still more weakly tries to expunge unsatisfactory consciousness by a narcotic and "forget his pains," by aid of tobacco, opium, or anything whatever that blunts.

Need of better life.

So it follows that parallel with any general movement toward voluntary or even intelligent temperance there must go the beginnings of better life in all departments; better bodies, better people to live in the bodies, thoughts and purposes, ambitions and heart's best desires that will give life its sense of wholeness and make worthy accomplishment, alternating with rest, quite enough. Else were all the lotus-like drugs "prohibited," or totally banished, sensuality in one or other form of gluttony would largely replace inebriety, and the imperfect would continue to kill themselves off instead of climbing out toward completeness. No one ever worked far into the subject without coming onto a startling new realization of the words of Christ, "I came that they might have life, and might have it more abundantly." It is that "more abundantly" that lies at the root of this. stimulation problem. It is that "fantasy," as Carlyle calls it, urging man, animal, and soul, to double up on simple animality and be more or other than his animal self, whether growing toward the stature and estate of a God or wal lowing into sensualities that the animals scarcely know.

Hereditary influence.

We spoke of the effects of stimulants and narcotics on children through their parents. We might take for a text Charcot's somewhat epigrammatic putting of it, "Every drop of the semen of the alcoholic contains the potentiality of all the neuropathies." This is a terse way of saying what has lately been discovered with so much surprise, namely, that alcohol, in whatever minute amounts, paralyzes or disorders the nervous economy just in proportion to those amounts; that this nervous disturbance persists for several days after a single small dose; that it takes an innumerable variety of forms in different persons, and that whether for heavy drinking or for light and occasional drinking, the result par excellence is a nervous result. When some years ago it was found that an ounce and a half of alcohol per diem could be oxidized by an adult man so as to leave his

stomach, and kidney, the making into tripe and gristle of the whole outfit of viscera is comparatively a tolerable change to the change in the man himself, i. e., in his perceptions and emotions, i. e., in his brain and nerves. Or, to be technical, the catarrh and cirrhosis in the abdominal organs is not as serious a change as is the degeneration in one part or another of the nervous system. These degenerations are furthermore highly transmissible. The use of tobacco.

We will only call attention once more to their great variety in individuals, justifying Charcot's "all the neuropathies." Tobacco is practically an all-round poison. It is purely depres sant, by direct irritation and paralysis, to each and all of the vital functions. After a habitreaction is established there is consequently a transient stimulation to all these functions, and so, that general sense of well-being, comfort, calmness, easy digestion, and what not, which our smoking litterateurs have so often and feelingly portrayed.† For the same reason after

*It was also supposed that the effects of alcoholics taken to a point entirely short of intoxication differed materially from those where inebriation was perceptible. This was a total fallacy. The smaller amounts, as in beer, single glasses of wine, etc., have in proportion to amount the same effects in degenerating nervous structures, disordering cardiac and other functions, and causing the growth of (at first protective films) layers of interstitial fibrous matter in liver and kidneys, that eventually choke out the proper liver and kidney cells, and turn these organs into tough gristly bodies that creak when cut with a knife.

+"Tobacco, divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco! which goes far beyond all the ranaceas, potable gold and philosopher's stones, is a Sovereign remedy in all diseases; a good vomit, I confess; a virtuous herb if it be well qualified, opportunely taken and medicinally used. But as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purge of goods, lands and health." (Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy.) The dreamy state of "solace" induced by smoking is one particularly in which the actual society of woman is no longer a need; a sort of dream about it is enough. Apropos of this, the pictures of actresses sold with many tobaccos. So too the lower and lower uses for women that survive to the tobacco user as he advances in narcotization and partial impotence.