Chapter I: Getting Ready for Bed

By and by the clock strikes eight or nine, and your mother says, "Children, time to go to bed!"

Sometimes you will have just come to the interesting point in the story, and would give anything to go on and finish it. But often you will be just nodding over your book, or beginning to wonder why the story is not quite so interesting as it was, or why the lines seem to be running into one another, and the book inclined to swing up and bump your nose.

If you have had a lively, busy, happy day, you are quite sleepy enough to be ready for bed--that is, if you could drop into it with all your clothes on, without all the bother and fuss of undressing. So you pull yourself together bravely and answer, "All right, mother," and say "Good night" to everybody, and upstairs you go.

Of course, you must take off your clothes, because you would find them most uncomfortable to sleep in. Besides, the little pores all over your skin have been pouring out perspiration all day long; and a great deal of this has been caught by your clothes, just as it is caught by the bedclothes while you sleep.

So it is a good thing to take off your clothes, and let your skin be well aired and cooled. Don't leave your clothes all in a heap on the floor just where you happen to shed them, but hang them up over the back of a chair or on pegs, so that the air can blow through them all night long and sweeten and clean and dry them. Clothes that are worn continuously become sour with perspiration, and for this same reason your mother gives you regularly, once or twice a week, clean underwear and clean shirts or dresses.

After you have undressed for bed, wash your face and neck and hands; and if you have a nice warm room or bathroom, take a quick splash, or sponge bath, all over, before you put on your nightgown. This will wash away from your skin everything that the perspiration has been leaving on it all day long, as well as any dust, or dirt, that may have got on it during the day.

If the room is not warm enough for you to do this, it is a good thing for you to strip to your waist and then to swing your arms about, much as you did in the morning, only not quite so long, and to rub your arms and neck and shoulders all over with your hands. This gives them an _air bath_, and rubs off any of the little scales of skin that may be ready to be shed, and gives you a sort of dry wash, which is next best to a wet one.

Then, when you have put on your nightdress, give your hair a thorough brushing. This is the best time of the day to do it. Dust, smoke, soot, and germs have been blowing into your hair all day long, and a thoroughly good brushing will not only get these out of it before they have had time to work their way in and lodge on the scalp, but will keep the hair bright and healthy.

Before you get into bed, give your nails a quick scrub with a nail brush and hot water and soap, and go over them with a _blunt_-pointed nail cleaner, cleaning out any dirt that may be under their edges, and rounding off any ragged or broken points with the file. Once a week or so, when you take your hot bath, it is a good thing to go over your toe nails in the same way, trimming them and cleaning them. Remember, however, not to round off your toe nails at the corners, but to leave them square, as in this way you will prevent them from ingrowing under the pressure of your shoes.

There is one thing that you should be very sure of before you get into bed, and that is that your teeth are as clean as it is possible for you to make them. If you attended to this also directly after supper, so much the better; for just as it is important to clean the dishes and knives and forks that you have been using, so it is important to thoroughly clean the ivory knives and forks that grow in your mouth. Talk about being "born with a silver spoon in your mouth"! You were born with something much prettier and far more valuable.

Even though your teeth make a firm and even line in front and on their cutting edges, yet there are many little gaps and spaces between their roots, where bits of food can stick. If these scraps of food are not thoroughly and carefully removed after each meal, the warmth and moisture in the mouth makes them begin to decay. The acids from this decay will be likely not only to upset your stomach and digestion, but to act upon the glassy coating of your teeth. After a little while, spots will begin to form on the surface of your teeth; they will lose their bright, shiny, pearly look; the acids will eat further into the teeth, and very soon there will be holes, or _cavities_.

Though your teeth are very hard and glassy looking on the surface, they are much softer and chalkier inside; this glassy coating covers only the _crown_, or free part, of the tooth, which you can see. It leaves the softer inside part of the tooth bare just at the edge of the gums, and particularly between the roots of the teeth, where little scraps of food lodge and decay. When the acids that are formed by the decaying food have eaten away a good deal of the inside of the tooth, the hard, shiny surface is left just like a thin shell; and one day you happen to bite down upon a piece of bone in your food, or try to crack a nut with your teeth, and "crack" goes this brittle shell of your hollow tooth.

If the gums are not kept clean and healthy, the second teeth
that are getting ready to push out the first teeth will not come
in strong and good, nor will the teeth remain good. This picture
shows how the teeth grow. Notice the gaps between the teeth,
where food may lodge.]

Right in the middle of each tooth is a tiny hollow, or cavity, filled with a soft, living pulp containing one or two very sensitive nerves; and when the decay has eaten into the tooth far enough to reach this nerve pulp, it makes it ache, and then you have _toothache_.

The one and only thing that is necessary in order to avoid all this decay and breaking away of your teeth, and throbbing toothache, is to keep the surface of your teeth, and particularly the sides where they are next one another, clean and smooth and unbroken. And all that is needed to keep your teeth perfectly clean and smooth is to use your toothbrush thoroughly after every meal and at bedtime; and then, if there are any little scraps of food between the teeth that have not been brushed away, to pick them out gently with a quill toothpick, or take a piece of silk or linen thread, push it up between the teeth, and gently saw backward and forward until you have cleaned out the space between the roots. You should take at least three to five minutes after every meal and before you go to bed at night to brush your teeth; and you should brush not only your teeth, but the whole surface of your gums close up to where they join the lips.

It is almost as important to keep your gums pink and hard and healthy as it is to keep your teeth clean; and the same thorough brushing will do both. If the gums are perfectly healthy, they will come well down over the roots of the teeth, and keep them safely covered right down to where the glassy outer coating begins, and so leave no gap where the acids of decay can attack the teeth. Be sure to brush your teeth, not merely straight backward and forward, but up and down and round and round as well, both to clean out thoroughly all the grooves and openings between them and to brush the gums well down over the teeth.

It may seem strange, but one of the best ways to keep your teeth from growing crooked and irregular is to keep your nose clear and healthy, so that you can breathe through it freely at all times, both day and night. Crooked jaws and irregular teeth are more often caused by mouth breathing than by any other one thing.

You can see why it is best to be careful not to get grit or dirt or bits of bone in your food, and not to crack nuts or hard candy with your teeth. If you do, you may crack or scratch the delicate glassy coating of your teeth. But, on the other hand, it is a good thing to give the teeth plenty to do, and particularly to eat the crusts of bread, and some of the tougher parts of meat, and parched corn or other grains, and to eat celery, apples, and other foods that take a great deal of chewing. The teeth are like everything else in the body--they need plenty of vigorous work in order to keep them healthy.

Be very careful, though, to keep out of your mouth anything that might possibly crack or scratch the glassy coating, such as pins, pennies, pieces of wire, or slate pencils. It is best not even to try to bite off threads or pieces of string. There is, of course, another reason for not putting pencils and pennies and such things into your mouth: they may have dirt, or germs, on them and infect you with disease or at least upset your digestion.