ook forward to decrepitude, to failure in zest of
living, to lessening of real enjoyment because of coming years. Life
should increase in beauty and usefulness, in ability and joyousness,
as the years bring us a wider experience, and this will be the case if
we in youth have been wise enough to lay the foundation of health by a
wise, thoughtful, prudent care of our bodies and our minds.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This Dr. Mary Wood-Allen has done in a volume entitled "Marvels of
Our Bodily Dwelling." This book teaches physiology and hygiene, by
metaphor, parable, and allegory in a most charming way. Superbly
illustrated. 12mo. Price, cloth, $1.50, post free.

CHAPTER III.

FOOD.

If I can arouse in your mind a most earnest desire to be strong and
vigorous, I shall not find it necessary to give you very minute
directions, for if you have the ambition you will find the way. If I
could excite in you an intense longing to visit Paris, I should know
that you would begin to seek for the way of getting there. If I could
create in you an earnest aspiration to be well and physically strong,
I should know that you would seek for the books that would give you
the necessary instruction. It will not be needful to talk of rules and
restrictions if I can make you feel the glory of having a sound body.

If you were starting on a journey, I should not need to warn you of
by-paths, of traps, or of dangers if I could be assured that your eye
was fixed upon your ultimate destination. So it is in the matter of
health; and yet there are some general rules or principles which I
might lay down for your consideration.

In regard to the matter of diet. I do not want you to be hampered by
"don'ts" and restrictions as to what you shall eat, but I do want you
to eat with the thought in view that eating is to be governed by
judgment and not by the pleasures of sense. Why do we eat? Not merely
because the food tastes good. There is a better reason. We eat to
live. We know that the food which we take into our bodies is digested,
elaborated and assimilated--that is, made over into ourselves--and
unless this digestion, elaboration and assimilation is properly
conducted, we shall not be fully and completely nourished. Our body is
made up of cells; the food which we eat is transformed into cell
structure, and this new cell-material takes the place of the worn-out
cells. Our reason would tell us that if too little material is
furnished, cells will n