ty of food must obviously vary with age,
temperament, and the season. But three general rules may be laid down as
of prime importance: the meals should be regular in their occurrence;
they should be sufficiently near together to prevent great hunger, and
absolutely nothing should be taken between them. An exception may,
however, be safely made to this last rule, with regard to young
children, in this wise, making a rule which I have known as established
in families. "If the children are hungry enough to eat dry bread, they
can have as much as they want at any time; if they are not, they are far
better off without anything." These are the plainest rules of
Physiology, and yet how few of the girls around us are made to follow
them! Nothing is more sure to produce a disordered digestion, than the
habit of irregular eating or drinking. If possible, the growing girl
should have her dinner in the middle of the day. The exigencies of city
life make this arrangement in some cases inconvenient, and yet
inconvenience is less often than is popularly supposed synonymous with
impracticability. If this cannot be done, and luncheons must be carried
to school, the filling of the lunch-basket should never be left, except
under exact directions, to the kind-hearted servant, or to the girl
herself; and she should under no circumstances be allowed to buy her
luncheon each day of the baker, or the confectioner, a usual practice
twenty years ago of the girls in Boston private schools.

There are children and young girls who are said to have cravings for
certain kinds of food, not particularly nutritious, but in ninety-nine
per cent of these cases the cause of the morbid appetite can be found in
the want of proper direction in childhood. The fact is, that _the
formation of a healthy appetite is properly a subject of education_. The
physical taste of the little girl needs rational direction as well as
her mental taste, though mothers too often do not recognize the fact. It
would seem almost like an insult to the intelligence of my readers, to
say, that warm bread of whatever kind, pastry, confectionery, nuts, and
raisins, should form no part of a girl's diet; did we not every day, not
only in restaurants and hotels, but at private tables, see our girls fed
upon these articles.

The German child, in the steady German climate, may drink perhaps with
impunity, beer, wine, tea and coffee; but to our American girls, with
their nervous systems stun