Chapter II: Part 2

MOTHER: Yes; your true skin is just the same color as that of the negro and the Indian. The coloring matter under the outer skin is all that makes the difference. This outer covering is made of little horny scales laid one over another, much as a roof might be if it had ten or twelve layers of shingles. The outer scales keep wearing away all the time, and new ones take their places. You know a snake sheds its skin and crawls away with a new one. We shed our skin, too, little by little, but the scales are so small we can hardly see them. If you should wear your under-clothing several days, and then shake it in the sunlight, you would see little scales floating about in the air like dust.

AMY: Isn’t the skin thicker in some parts of the body than others?

MOTHER: Yes; on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet it is quite thick, while on the lips and some other parts of the body it is very thin indeed. Have you noticed how the skin looks if it is scratched and then heals up?

ELMER: Just the same as it did before.

MOTHER: But if there is a deep cut or a severe burn, how does it look after it heals?

HELEN: There is a scar left.

MOTHER: This shows that the outer skin and the coloring matter will come back as they were before if they are hurt; but when the true skin is injured, the blood makes a kind of patch, which we call a scar. Another curious thing about the true skin is that it has tiny muscles, and when the body is cold, they draw up and make little hillocks, which we call “goose-flesh.”

But the skin is very useful, besides being a covering for the body. When we were getting dinner to-day, what did we do with the potato parings and other things we did not wish to keep?

PERCY: We put them in the garbage box.

MOTHER: Why did we do that?

AMY: Because they were not fit for food.

MOTHER: And what do we call that which we do not wish to keep, and so throw away?

HELEN: We call it _waste_.

MOTHER: What do we do with waste matter? Do we let it stay in the house?

ELMER: No; we throw it away.

MOTHER: Why would it not be best to let it remain in the house?

PERCY: Because it would decay and make us ill.

MOTHER: Well, it is the same way in the house we live in. All the food we eat can not be used, and some parts of the body are wearing out all the time. If the waste stayed inside, we should become ill. In the skin there are thousands and millions of little tubes called _pores_, which help carry away the waste. If you become very warm, you say you are “sweating,” or per-spir´ing; that is, drops of water come out all over your body. They come through the pores, or little holes in the skin. But we sweat, or perspire, all the time, whether we can see it or not. If the pores of the skin were stopped up, a person would soon die. If the skin is very dirty, the sweat can not get out, and it stays inside. To show you how many pores there are, you may look at this little piece of paper, which is just one inch square. In such a space on the limbs there are _five hundred_ pores. On the trunk of the body, forehead, back of the hand, and on the foot, _one thousand_; and on the palm of the hand and sole of the foot there are _twenty-seven hundred_. Each of these little waste-pipes is one-fifth of an inch long. If they were placed one after another, wise men tell us we would have two or three miles, and perhaps even more, of waste-pipes for the body. What do you suppose would happen if they were choked up, and all the waste should remain inside?

AMY: We would become ill.

MOTHER: We surely would. Sometimes we call it “taking cold.” If we cool off too quickly when warm, or get our clothes wet and do not put on dry ones, or in a warm spring day put on thin clothes, all these things stop the waste-pipes, and we “catch cold,” have a sore throat, and we may have a fever, which shows that the waste is being burned up inside; and the house becomes burning hot.

PERCY: Then the pores must be kept open all the time if we would be well.

MOTHER: Yes; but there is another way than those I have told you by which they get choked up. The waste-pipes leave the dirt they carry out of the body on the skin, for that is as far as they can carry it. The master of the house must see that the skin is kept clean, so the pipes will not be choked.

ELMER: Then he ought to wash it often.

MOTHER: I think so, and not only some parts, but the whole house needs a good scrubbing with soap and warm water as often as twice a week, and if he will then take a bath of some kind each day, that will keep the skin clean and healthy. Even rubbing the whole body once a day with a damp towel and then with a dry one, will keep the waste-pipes open, so they can do good work, if there is a thorough scrubbing twice a week, as I have said. We should also be careful to wear clean clothing next to the skin, for there is about a quart of waste matter carried through the pores every day. Can you think of any other ways in which the skin is useful besides being a covering and carrying away the waste?

HELEN: It helps us _feel_ different objects. Those who are blind learn to do many useful things by the sense of touch.

MOTHER: Yes, we learn many things by this sense. You know when you show anything to a baby it stretches out its little hands to “feel” of the object. How do you think such poisons as alcohol and tobacco affect this covering of the body?

AMY: They must make more waste in the body, and so the skin has more to do.

PERCY: I think it must fill it full of poison.

ELMER: Does alcohol make the skin look red, mother?

MOTHER: Yes; that is why a man who drinks beer or other drinks containing alcohol, has such a red face. Sometimes his nose is called a “rum blossom.” The alcohol makes the blood-vessels larger than they should be, and so his nose and face become very red. Bad food is also hurtful to the skin, for it can not be clear and healthy if the blood is not clean. Pimples and sores are caused by bad blood, and they show that better food is needed in the body.

AMY: But you haven’t told us what the roof of the body house is, mother.

MOTHER: Have you ever seen a house with a thatched roof--I mean one covered with hay or straw instead of iron or shingles?

ELMER: Oh, yes, we saw some when we were out in the country!

MOTHER: Well, the roof of the house we live in is more like that than like a shingled roof.

PERCY: Now I know what you mean: the body-house has a roof of hair.

MOTHER: And it is a most beautiful covering, too. Each hair grows in a little pocket, which is furnished with a tiny bag of coloring matter and a bottle of hair oil. These give color to the hair, and keep it soft and smooth. If we put much oil on the hair, it causes the oil bottles in the skin to dry up. There is no dressing so good as that which is made in the skin. We should brush and comb the hair carefully, to keep it shining and healthy.

People sometimes lose this beautiful thatch, and we say they are “bald-headed.” In very old people it turns gray or white, and it is like a beautiful, silvery crown. The Bible says that “a hoary head is a crown of glory.” Very small, new houses sometimes have no thatch at all, but as they get larger and older, one grows, and at first it is fine as softest silk. The Bible says that even the hairs of our head are all numbered or counted by our heavenly Father. From this we may see how much He loves and cares for us.

THE CUPOLA

ELMER: Have you seen the cupola on the new house in the next street, mother?

MOTHER: Yes; it is very pretty. It is quite common now to build cupolas on large houses. But I was thinking, as you came in, of the cupola, or tower, on the house we live in. Can you think what it is?

PERCY: It must be the head.

MOTHER: That is right, but, unlike the cupola of a common house, which is used but little, the head is the best room of all, and the others would be of little worth without it. It is here we find the master, the one who gives orders to his servants, the muscles, and directs all they do.

In large business houses you sometimes see a room having on the door the word “Office,” and you know if you have business there, that is the place for you to go to find the manager. We might call the head the office room of the body, for it is here the manager is always found if at home.

While you know there is a master to our house, yet you can not see him. He may peep through the windows, you may hear him speak, and you can talk to him. Perhaps you will love him very much, or you may dislike to be near him. You may see his work, but still you can not see _him_.

AMY: You must mean that the mind is master of the body, is it not, mother?

MOTHER: It surely _ought_ to be; but I am sorry to say that in some houses the servants get the master to do as they like, and then the body-house has a bad time, for “whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.” The apostle Paul said, “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection,” and this is the work given to the master of every body-house. The mind should know what is good for the body, and, though the servants may ask many times to do as they like, he should firmly say, “_No_,” whenever they wish to do wrong. Can you tell what the mind is?

HELEN: It is the part of me that thinks and remembers.

MOTHER: And it also _wills_, that is, we “make up our mind,” as we say. Why do you think our mind is in the head?

PERCY: Why, if our hands, arms, or feet were cut off, we could still think.

MOTHER: Do you remember the name of the organ inside the head with which we think?

AMY: The brain.

MOTHER: Yes; and since the brain is such an important part of the body, it is put in the strongest room of all. It sometimes becomes ill if not used right, so we should learn how to keep it well. The worst sickness in the world is mind sickness, and it is hardest to cure.

The brain has six coverings in all. The outside coverings are the hair and scalp, or skin. Then we find the strong bones, fitted closely together with saw-teeth edges. Inside the bones the brain has three coverings: first, a tough, strong skin; then a very thin covering, hardly thicker than a spider’s web; and the third is made up of many little blood-vessels, which feed the brain.

AMY: I wish we could see how the brain looks, mother.

PERCY: I have seen brains at the butcher shops. Do ours look like that?

MOTHER: Yes, quite the same. You have all seen the marrow in the bones. The brain looks some like that, too. It is made of jelly-like matter, and seems to be all crumpled up, so it is full of ridges and creases, as you see in this picture. It is said a baby’s brain is quite smooth, but the more a person thinks, the more ridges and furrows his brain will have and the deeper they are. A frog’s brain is smooth, like this.

ELMER: But I don’t see how the brain thinks.

MOTHER: That is one of the things we can never understand. God gave men life, and when we are alive we think. “In Him we live, and move, and have our being,” and to be able to think is one of the best gifts that comes with life. It is the life God gives us which makes the body-house worth more than the most costly palace in the world.

If we look carefully into the brain, we see that the outside is gray, and the inside is white. Wise men tell us this matter is made of cells, called nerve cells, or brain cells. The gray matter tells the muscles what to do, and the white part sends the orders to all parts of the body through the nerves.

ELMER: Have we more than one brain, mother?

MOTHER: I might say no, and yes. It is really one, and yet it is in several parts. One is the big brain, which is found above the ears in the top of the head. It is with this part we think and reason. Then there is a little brain, in the back part of the head under the large brain. It is about as big as a medium-sized orange. Each brain has two parts, a right and left half, so we really have two brains. It might be said we are “left brained” when we are “right handed,” for the right hand is ruled by the left half of the brain.

AMY: How large is the brain, mother?

MOTHER: That of a man weighs about three pounds. An elephant’s weighs eight or ten pounds, and that is the heaviest of any we know. The brain must be used, the same as the muscles, if we would have it do its work well. It makes it grow and does it good when we study and think. As it was made to think about something, we should give it good things to think about. If it is lazy, it will lose the power to work, just as the muscles do, and if used, it will grow stronger and can do still harder work.

HELEN: And does it ever need rest?

MOTHER: Certainly; it must rest, the same as the muscles. People sometimes hurt the brain by working it very hard and letting the muscles do nothing.

PERCY: But how can it rest? We can’t stop thinking.

MOTHER: No; we think of something all the time we are awake, so the best way to rest the brain is to take plenty of sleep. Sometimes a part of it keeps awake while the body is asleep, and then we say we had a dream. Another way to rest the mind is to set the muscles at work after we have been reading or studying. Boys and girls in school should spend part of each day working, or in some way using their muscles in the open air.

ELMER: I should think the master of the body-house would want to look outside of his little room sometimes.

MOTHER: Yes, he does; and the cupola of which we have been talking has two wonderful windows.

AMY: Oh, I know what they are! They are our eyes.

MOTHER: Yes, and through them the master looks out and sees all that is passing around him.

HELEN: I should think there ought to be windows on all sides of his room. He can look out only one way.

MOTHER: But you see this cupola is placed on top of a tower we call the neck, which turns easily and quickly, and, besides, the whole house can “face about” in an instant, so he can look other ways than straight ahead, with no trouble.

PERCY: Why do you call the brain the master of the house, mother?

MOTHER: Because it tells the feet, hands, tongue, eyes, and all other parts of the body what to do, and they obey it. Sometimes we find a bad master in one of these beautiful houses. He tells the feet to go to a saloon. He tells the tongue to ask for beer and other kinds of strong drink. He tells the hand to lift the glass to his lips. It may be he knows he is taking poison into the house, which will make his servants, the muscles, unfit for work. Perhaps he knows, too, that the drink will hurt himself more than any other part of the body-house, for it puts him to sleep when he ought to be awake telling his servants what to do, yet he does it, and often suffers all the rest of his life for his folly.

ELMER: Does alcohol hurt the brain?

MOTHER: Surely it does. It makes the blood impure, so it can not furnish good food for the brain. It causes more blood to go to the head than ought to be there. It makes people mad, crazy, or insane.

Sometimes it brings that awful disease, delirium tremens, and then the poor master thinks his best friends are his enemies, that serpents and horrible creatures are crawling over his body, and he dies a terrible death, and goes into a drunkard’s grave. He ruins the house God gave him to live in, and finds it is true that “at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.”

Children, never touch these poison drinks.

“Never put them in your mouth, To steal away your brains.”

OUR TELEPHONE SYSTEM

PERCY: Ting-a-ling! There’s the telephone bell. How strange it seems to talk to people, and hear them talk, when they are miles away!

MOTHER: But the most wonderful telephone in the world is found in the house we live in.

HELEN: Why, mother, you don’t mean to say we have wires all through our bodies, do you?

MOTHER: Not wires, but something that answers the same purpose, only it is far more perfect. You know the brain is the master of the house, and there are hundreds of muscles waiting to do what he bids them. But the brain is upstairs, safe in his own strong little room. How can he tell the fingers how to work, and the feet where to walk?

AMY: Please tell us, mother. I’m sure I don’t know.

MOTHER: Well, instead of wires we have thousands of little lines called _nerves_, reaching from the brain to every part of the body. They are made of matter like that in the brain, and they are so close together that you can touch no place on your body, even with the point of a pin, without touching a nerve. Messages are sent over them to the brain, and back again to the muscles. With the nerves we _feel_. We call it the sense of touch.

We might call the brain the “central office,” from which messages are sent, and where they come back. In the city you have seen many wires stretched on poles. Sometimes they are bound up together and covered over, making a cable like a big rope. You remember I told you there is a spinal cord or marrow running through your backbone. This is made up of many nerves, as the cable is made of many wires. There are sixty-two branch lines coiled up in it. By looking at the bottom part of the picture of the brain you will see where this large cable enters the central office. Really, the top part of the cord is a little brain itself, with a long name, which we will not trouble now to learn.

ELMER: If all the nerves come from the backbone, how do any get to the face?

MOTHER: There are some little holes in the skull, and through these twenty-four branch lines pass, carrying the nerves all over the face and head. One pair find their way to the nose, and they tell the master of the house how things smell. Another pair reach to the eyes, and tell him how things look. They are nerves of sight. There are three pairs to tell the muscles of the eye how to move. One pair passes to the ears, and are called nerves of hearing. The others are scattered all over the face, passing to the teeth, tongue, and throat, and even to other parts of the body. This picture shows the brain as the main office, the cord or cable in the back-bone, and how the branches extend to all parts of the body. Still there are thousands of smaller lines which can not be seen at all.

HELEN: And what sends the messages to and from the brain over the nerves, mother?

MOTHER: The power which sends them is called “nerve force,” though what it is even the wisest men do not know. We can stop it by pressing on the nerves, just as you can stop the current of the telegraph. We sometimes say that our leg or arm is “asleep.” If we try to move, it gives us pain, or it may be we can not move at all. One nerve runs along the back side of the arm over the elbow. If we hit the elbow, it makes the arm and hand feel numb. We say the “funny bone,” or the “crazy bone,” is hurt, but it is not the bone at all, but the nerve.

AMY: I heard a lady who is ill say she wished she had no nerves. Why do we have them?

MOTHER: I think we have already learned how useful they are to carry messages for us. We would be quite helpless without them, for the brain sends word over them every time we move any part of the body. Another reason is they watch for our welfare. If we are cut or burned, it gives us pain. We don’t like the pain, so we are more careful when we use sharp tools or go near the fire.

If you touch the hot stove, you jerk away your hand. “I’m burnt,” the finger sends word to the brain. The brain sends back the message, “Get off the stove, quick.” And to the nerves of the eye it says, “See if it is blistered.” To the face muscles, “Make up a wry face to show how badly it hurts.” To the feet and hands, “Get some cold water to put the burned finger in.” To the tongue, “Tell your mother about it.” All these messages are sent at the rate of one hundred feet a second, and the eye, face, hands, feet, and tongue all feel sorry for the burnt finger, and do all they can to help it.

Every part of the body, the bones, muscles, stomach, heart, and lungs, has these useful little nerves to let the master know when anything is wrong with them.

ELMER: Do the nerves ever get sick, mother?

MOTHER: Oh, yes, very often! Sometimes they are so ill that no message can pass over them to the brain. Then we say the person is paralyzed. A lady had her limbs paralyzed. She could not walk, or move her feet at all. One day she took a foot bath. She could not tell whether the water was cold or hot, and soon the nurse found the skin on her feet blistered, because the water was too warm. The nerves were dead, and she felt no pain at all. Pain is hard to bear, but if there were no pain, the house we live in would soon be ruined. It tells us when danger is near, and because we do not like the pain, we take care of the body. The nerves are more wonderful than any telephone or telegraph, and when you get older, you must learn all you can about them.

HELEN: The brain must have a lot of work looking after the nerves and sending so many messages over them. I don’t see how it can think of anything else.

MOTHER: Perhaps I can explain it to you. Suppose there is a family who have much to do. The father does the hardest work of all. When his wife sees how much he has to do, she tries to help him all she can, so she does many things without saying anything to her husband about it. They have one son, a strong, upright young man, and he takes part of the work, because he wishes to help his parents. We will call the large brain the father, because it does so much of our thinking. As you say, Helen, if he looked after all parts of the body, there would be but little time for study and helping other people. Besides, he falls asleep sometimes, so the little brain, which we will call his wife, takes the work that must be done _all_ the time, as good wives and mothers do, such as keeping the heart beating, the lungs breathing, and other parts of the body at work which can not stop to rest. Then there is the spinal cord, which we will call the son, and he takes charge of the feet and hands when they have common kinds of work to do. When you went to school this morning, I saw you reading a book while you walked. Your brain did not send word to each muscle what to do every time you took a step, but you walked “without thinking,” as we say. The spinal cord took charge of your feet, so we know it can do an easy kind of thinking. When you were learning to skate, Percy, you kept thinking all the time how to move your feet and what to do to keep from falling. But after you had learned how, Father Brain gave his son, Spinal Cord, charge of you, and he thinks of something else most of the time while you skate. It is the same with anything we have learned to do well by doing it over and over, such as playing the piano, riding a bicycle, and many other things we keep doing again and again.

PERCY: Does alcohol harm the nerves, mother?

MOTHER: Yes, indeed. Alcohol seems to like the nerves better than any other part of the body, and it does them more harm than any other, except the brain. When alcohol touches a nerve, it dries it up and makes it hard, as though it had been burned. It causes that dreadful disease, paralysis, of which I have told you. The nerves get so stupid and sleepy they do not know what the brain says to them. They can not tell the muscles what to do, and this is why a drunken man staggers. A drunkard has trembling hands, because the poison has made his nerves sick. Sometimes those wonderful nerves of the eye and ear tell him lies, and he believes what they say. Sometimes the poor nerves and brain are so nearly dead that the man falls down, and people say he is “dead drunk.”

ELMER: I have heard people say tobacco was good for the nerves, that it made them feel rested, and they could think better.

MOTHER: Tobacco is a poison, and is as hurtful to the nerves as alcohol. One who uses it thinks he is rested, but the reason he feels so is because the poison has put his nerves to sleep. Tobacco also creates an appetite for strong drinks. It is very bad for boys to use tobacco in any way.

AMY: What should we do to keep the nerves well?

MOTHER: Give them good food, plenty of fresh air, and no poisons of any kind. They must also have rest to keep them strong. It helps the nerves to be happy and cheerful. The little boy in this picture is forming a bad habit, which will not only make him unhappy but unhealthy. Hateful, unpleasant thoughts make poisons in the body and cause sickness in the brain and nerves. People sometimes drop dead by becoming very angry. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” Yes, it is much better than any medicine men can make. Children should form the habit of being happy and hopeful. The brain and nerves will form good or bad habits, and the master of the body-house should use all his power to have them good instead of bad. Every evil habit leaves a scar on the brain.

THE HALL OR PASSAGE

MOTHER: I once read a book called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and in it a story was told of how a lady was once talking with a little negro girl named Topsy.

“Who made you?” she asked the child.

“Nobody, as I knows on. _I s’pect I grow’d_,” was the answer.

Now we know God made the body-houses we live in, for “it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves;” yet in one way Topsy was right, for we all “grow’d.” God made us grow, and it is He only that can make anything grow.

ELMER: But we must have food to make us grow.

MOTHER: Yes, everything that has life must have food of some kind. You remember I told you we had iron, lime, and other things to build the body-house, just as a man must have wood, brick, iron, and glass when he wishes to build. We have looked at the outside of the house we live in, and we have learned some things about its frame, its servants, the telephone system, and the master who lives inside. Now we will look through some of the wonderful rooms in the house, and I am sure you will enjoy learning how they are made, and the work that is done in them.

The door, or entrance, is so small we can not possibly go inside ourselves, so here is a slice of good whole-wheat bread we will send, and I will tell you what it finds within. As it has no tongue, I will speak the words it would say if it could talk, and you may ask any question you wish. Now listen:—

I was made from the wheat that grew in a farmer’s field. After the miller had ground me into flour, your mother made me into a loaf, and I was baked in a hot oven till I was brown all over outside. As she put me away to cool, she said, “That will make the children grow.” She left me alone a whole day, for she knew I was unfit to be eaten while so warm. After that I was cut into slices and made ready to help mend and build up the body-house.

I started on my way to the kitchen, where much of the work is done, and to get there passed through a pair of front doors, which were a pretty red color. These doors, I have been told, can do wonderful things besides opening to let visitors pass in. They can sing, whistle, and talk. They look best when the corners turn up; if they turn down, one does not care to go near them.

HELEN: Oh, I see! You mean our lips.

MOTHER: Yes, I think that is what you call them. When I passed inside the doors, I found a double row of thirty-two servants, all dressed in clean white dresses, waiting for me. Children have only twenty-eight of these servants, I am told. It was their work to make me ready for the kitchen downstairs. If the house is very new, you will find only three or four, or perhaps none at all.

PERCY: The servants must be the teeth. I didn’t know there were so many.

AMY: And I think the bread we eat doesn’t always find them wearing clean white dresses, either. There is Uncle John; his teeth are all stained with nasty tobacco juice.

MOTHER: But they _should_ be dressed as I have said, and they need careful brushing and washing every day. They should not be used to crack nuts, for they may get broken. If they are not well cared for, the dresses wear out, and great holes can be seen in them. Sometimes they can be mended, and again they cause the master of the house much trouble, and he is obliged to get some one to take them away, because they give him so much pain.

I was quite surprised at the way these servants treated me, though I suppose they knew best what to do. Some of them cut me in two. Others tore me into pieces and ground me till I thought I was passing through another mill. As I had a chance, I looked around, and then I saw the room I was in had a beautiful arched ceiling of a pale pink color.

There was a large servant behind those dressed in white, and he wore a pink uniform. You should have seen the way he rolled me over and over in that room. The servants in white dresses never stirred from where they were standing, but the one wearing the pink uniform jumped from one side of the room to the other, and seemed to be a very lively fellow. I don’t know what he would have done had he not been fastened to the floor. Sometimes, I am told, he peeps out between the folding doors to see what is going on outside, or to tell what kind of work is being done inside. I have heard that sometimes his dress becomes a dirty yellow or brown, and a man with a wise look comes and asks this servant to step outside a moment, till he can see how his uniform looks.

HELEN: How funny to think of our teeth and tongue as our servants!

MOTHER: But that is what they are. There is another group of servants in this passage, called _glands_. They have little rooms opening into the passage near the floor, and also in the back part of the room. If you ever visited a cave, you remember the walls were wet, and water was dropping from them. You know the skin on the outside of your body feels dry. Some parts of the body have skin inside, but it is _wet_ instead of dry. It is that way in this hall. That which makes it so is called _saliva_, and it is the duty of the servants called glands to pour saliva over the food as soon as it comes through the front doors, while the tongue rolls it about, and the teeth grind it.

ELMER: But what good does that do?

MOTHER: It moistens the food and makes it slippery, so it can pass on to the kitchen. Perhaps you know bread is partly made of starch. Another thing the saliva does is to turn starch into sugar, and this makes less work in the kitchen downstairs, as the cook down there has but little to do with starch.

AMY: How may we know when the starch in bread or biscuit is changed to sugar?

MOTHER: If you let the teeth chew your food a long time, until it becomes well mixed with saliva, you will find that it tastes sweet. This is because the starch has become sugar, though you must not think this kind of sugar is as sweet as the sugar which you buy.

HELEN: If the walls in this room moisten the food, why should we drink while eating?

MOTHER: It is not best to drink much when you eat, and not at all unless your food is very dry. The glands furnish from one to three pints of saliva a day. If you drink much, the saliva is not well mixed with the food, and it is hurried down to the kitchen before the servants have finished their work. This makes extra work for the cook downstairs.

OUR KITCHEN

MOTHER: We will now let Bread proceed with its story. Remember I am telling you what it would say if it could talk. Now listen. While I was in the passage and the servants were making me ready to go to the kitchen, I saw a small pink curtain in the back end of the room, and I wondered what was behind it. I soon found out. After the tongue had pulled and pushed me around and rolled me over as long as he wished, he pushed me back toward the curtain, and I found myself in a room with no floor. I saw a passage which opens into the nose, but as soon as I came in sight, a curtain fell back and closed it, so I knew I was not wanted there. Then I saw another door, which I afterward learned led to the bath-room in the lungs, but as I was about to go in, a little trap door closed tightly, and so I found that was not the way to the kitchen. There was still another passage, for this room seemed to be filled with doors, even though it was so small, but that led to the ear. I began to think I was not wanted at all, for every door I came to was shut in my face, as it were.

HELEN: I don’t wonder Bread didn’t know which way to go, do you, mother? and it was a stranger in the house, too.

MOTHER: I was just thinking about going back through the folding doors through which I came, when a door opened in the back part of the throat, and I began to slide downstairs. Such queer stairs you never saw. They seemed to grow larger as I went down, and smaller at the top, so they kept pushing me, and I could not go back if I would.

PERCY: I suppose it was the same way when I swallowed a button the other day. I wanted it back badly enough, but it wouldn’t come.

HELEN: That shows you should never put such things as pins and buttons in your mouth.

ELMER: And what did the kitchen look like?

MOTHER: Like no room you ever saw in your life. I looked around for the corners, but there were none. It is shaped some like an egg. Here is a picture, which will help you to understand the shape of the room.

You see it has two doors, or openings,--one at which to go in, and the other to pass out. The walls are a pale pink color and are full of wrinkles if the room is empty. When the master of the house sends down so much bread or other food that it fills the kitchen full, the walls become smooth and the room is larger, but when the food first begins to go down, it finds the room quite small, and the walls full of folds, or wrinkles.

This room is very strong, as there are really three walls, one inside the other. The pink lining inside is made of wet skin, something like that found in the room upstairs. The middle wall is made of muscles, which cross one another in different ways; for the kitchen has many of these useful servants. The outer coat, or “overcoat,” of the stomach has for its work to pour out a kind of water to keep the walls moist so they will not stick to other things which are packed so closely in the trunk of the body. I am sure no person could ever pack so many things in a trunk the same size without crowding some of them or getting them out of order.

HELEN: But I would like to know who acts as cook in this curious kitchen.

MOTHER: The name of the head cook is Di-ges´tion. There is a whole family of helpers, named Juice, whose work it is to assist Di-ges´tion. Of course they do not boil and bake, as we do, but they take the food and make it ready for the use of the body. Perhaps you would call it di-gest´ing it.

The chief helper is a very important person, called Gastric Juice. When the kitchen is empty, Gastric Juice stays in some tiny bags or bottles which cover the walls of the kitchen all over, but as soon as anything comes into the room from the stairway at the top, she comes out and goes to work. She pours a fluid which looks like water, over the food, which dissolves, or melts it. If you could look inside you might think the stomach was “sweating;” but it is only Gastric Juice coming out to care for the food you have sent down to build and mend the body. Several quarts come from the walls of the kitchen every day.

Were you ever in a ship at sea? If so, you know that everything in the boat was shaking and moving. As soon as Bread comes into the kitchen, it finds the room moving like that, and it is thrown from one side to the other, and churned up and down, over and over, till, if you could see it, you would never think it was bread at all. Gastric Juice melts and mixes it, and it becomes so changed it looks very much like paste. After Bread comes downstairs, some potatoes, fruit, and other things “come tumbling after,” but after all has been in the kitchen two hours, you could not tell which is bread, fruit, or potatoes; for they are all mixed together.

I expect you are wondering how the food would ever get out of the kitchen. After it was shaken and churned several hours, the walls gave it a push, and it came to the door where visitors pass out. Such a queer door it was, too, but it opens and shuts like the one at the entrance to the passage. This door has neither hinges nor rollers. It was kept tightly closed while the food was churned about and melted, and it looks quite like a boy’s lips when he is going to whistle. As Bread came near, the door opened, and part of the food paste passed through into another room. Strange as it may seem to you, this door seems to do a kind of thinking, and if food tries to get through before it is made as fine as it should be, the door seems to say, “No, _sir_; you can not go through here;” and it shuts so close together that not another thing can pass out. So when the food came the first time, the door seemed to think part of it was too big to go through, and it was sent back, to be churned and squeezed again before it could go into the next room with the rest of the food.

ELMER: I didn’t know it took so much work and such a long time to digest what we eat.

MOTHER: This should teach us to use care in what we send into the stomach. Let me tell you a few other things about the stomach, which we call the kitchen of the body. The helper, Gastric Juice, does her work perfectly if she is used well; but when the master of the house is unkind, she always makes him suffer for it. Sometimes he sends down a lot of cold water, ice-cream, or some other kind of ice, when she is just ready to begin her work. This makes her kitchen so cold that she is obliged to wait till it gets warm again. She doesn’t like much water when she has work on hand; for she thinks Saliva and herself can moisten the food as much as it needs.

AMY: Does Di-ges´tion like hot drinks, mother?

MOTHER: No; they burn the tender walls of the stomach and make them weak. Tea and coffee are hurtful to the stomach, as well as to the nerves and other parts of the body. Another thing Di-ges´tion likes is to have all the food she is going to work on at once. That means we should eat what we need and then stop. If the master of the house sends down a good-sized dinner, and, after waiting an hour or two, sends some more, the poor cook has a hard time, and it is no wonder that she gets sulky. It is as though you had been at work during the day, and then I should ask you to work all night, and give you no time to rest.

The cook in our kitchen is willing to work hard, and then she wants a rest, and this she ought to have. She hates to work at night after working all day, but some masters are so unkind as to even call her up after she has gone to bed, thinking her day’s work is done; and she works and works away while other parts of the body have rest.

HELEN: I suppose that is when we eat between meals or late at night.

MOTHER: Yes; and another thing the cook dislikes is to have her kitchen filled so full that no more can get in. She must have room to work.

ELMER: That means we should not eat too much.

MOTHER: That is right. We should never eat till we feel so full we can take no more. If a builder was beginning to build or mend a house and you should pile bricks, timber, stones, and lime around him till he had no room to work, he would say, “Please take part of this out of my way, and then I can do something.” So the stomach wants just enough, but no more, and we should not make the cook cross by abusing her in this way. She also dislikes hot things, such as mustard, pepper, and spices. How would your eye feel if you should get some pepper or mustard in it?

ELMER: It would smart.

PERCY: It would look red.

MOTHER: That is the effect they have on the stomach, too. Neither does the cook like to have much fat or sugar. Sometimes she gets so provoked when the master of the house sends down things she can not use, or too much even of that which is good, that the doorway to the stairway opens by which they came down, and she throws them back in his face. He has a sorry time of it then, and it may be quite a while before she is pleased again. But she only does this after she has suffered a long time, and when she knows it is for the good of the body-house.

AMY: What a long time it takes to fix up the food we eat so it can be used in the body! I would like to know where the food goes after the cook in the kitchen has digested it.

MOTHER: We will finish this part of the story in the next chapter.

THE EATING ROOM

MOTHER: While waiting for the door to open to let the food pass from the stomach kitchen, let me tell you that the walls of the kitchen are covered with hundreds of little mouths; for you must remember this room is like no other that was ever made. These tiny mouths keep drinking the food which is digested, and it is taken into the blood through the tiny blood-vessels which cover the stomach.

At last comes the food which could not pass the door again, and this time it passes through into a long, narrow room, with walls quite like those of the kitchen. Sometimes a plum pit gets into the kitchen; the cook is unable to use it, and when it goes up to the door, it closes quickly, so it must stay where it is. Sometime after the door will open and let it through.

HELEN: That is the same as though you should tell me I should not do a thing, and then, because I teased or coaxed, you should let me do what you had before said I should not.

MOTHER: Yes, that is the way with this door-keeper. But sometimes the door closes very tightly, and then there is trouble, for that which can not get through the second door must find its way back through the first. We should be very careful about swallowing large seeds of fruit, buttons, or anything that is hard and can not be digested. People are sometimes made very ill in this way. But now we will learn what is done in the second room.

Perhaps it might be called the “serving room;” for it is here the food is made ready for the eating room. Here we find two assistant cooks. The name of one is Pan-cre-at´ic Juice, and the other is called Bile. Each one has a room of his own. Pan-cre-at´ic Juice has his home in a room back of the kitchen, which is called the pancreas. Bile lives in the largest room in the body-house, which is called the liver.

The liver might be called a factory; for it has hundreds of little rooms in which Bile is made. It has a waiting room, called the gall, where Bile stays when he is not wanted. This tiny room is close to the liver, and from that Bile goes to the serving room. On the way he meets Pan-cre-at´ic Juice, and they go on to their work together.

Bile, like some other servants, is hard to please, and he will do only one kind of work. It is the duty of these cooks to finish up the work that Gastric Juice has begun. Bile will work with hardly anything but fats, and it is his work to make them into such tiny drops that they can be used in the body. He must also furnish part of the fuel to keep the body warm. He sometimes gets lazy or angry if the master of the house gives him too much work, or if he sends too much fat or sugar into the serving room. The master of the house tells his friends he is “bilious,” which means that Bile is out of temper and wants less hard work and more rest.

PERCY: Is Pan-cre-at´ic Juice so particular as Bile?

MOTHER: No; he is much more obliging, and is willing to do anything that needs to be done. Together these helpers work over the food after it comes from the kitchen till it is very fine and creamy.

AMY: Does this room look like the kitchen?

MOTHER: The walls are very much the same, and they keep eating or sucking up the food that is wholly digested, much as a sponge sucks up water. A part is taken up this way and goes into the blood-vessels at once, but part is sent on to the eating room, where hundreds of little people are waiting for their breakfasts and dinners.

HELEN: How does the eating room look?

MOTHER: This room is very narrow and about twenty feet long. You must not think it is a straight room twenty feet long, for it is not. At one side it is fastened to a thin band, and the band is gathered like a frill or ruffle, so the room, though it is folded over and over, never gets tangled. Perhaps I might say it is like a tube more than a room.

The little folks who eat here do not sit at tables as you do. They are fastened to the walls, so they are always in the same places. Another name for this room is the “small intestine.”

ELMER: I would like to see some of the little folks who eat there. How large are they?

MOTHER: They are so very, _very_ small you could not see them unless you had a strong glass to help you. They stand up straight, like the soft, silky part of velvet or plush. They are called Villi.

As the food comes in from the serving room, another helper, called In-tes´ti-nal Juice, takes any part which the other servants have not finished as it passed through their rooms, and thus digestion is complete. The Villi soak the food up as it passes them, as a plant draws water and food from the ground.

HELEN: But how does it all get into the blood?