with the care of children will be expected to know something about
them. But this I may say: Those who habitually take in fresh
breath will probably grow up large, strong, ruddy, cheerful,
active, clear-headed, fit for their work. Those who habitually
take in the breath which has been breathed out by themselves, or
any other living creature, will certainly grow up, if they grow up
at all, small, weak, pale, nervous, depressed, unfit for work, and
tempted continually to resort to stimulants, and become drunkards.

If you want to see how different the breath breathed out is from
the breath taken in, you have only to try a somewhat cruel
experiment, but one which people too often try upon themselves,
their children, and their workpeople. If you take any small
animal with lungs like your own--a mouse, for instance--and force
it to breathe no air but what you have breathed already; if you
put it in a close box, and while you take in breath from the outer
air, send out your breath through a tube, into that box, the
animal will soon faint: if you go on long with this process, it
will die.

Take a second instance, which I beg to press most seriously on the
notice of mothers, governesses, and nurses. If you allow a child
to get into the habit of sleeping with its head under the bed-
clothes, and thereby breathing its own breath over and over again,
that child will assuredly grow pale, weak, and ill. Medical men
have cases on record of scrofula appearing in children previously
healthy, which could only be accounted for from this habit, and
which ceased when the habit stopped. Let me again entreat your
attention to this undoubted fact.