Chapter IV: Part 4

MOTHER: There are two of them in the lower part of the trunk close to the back, one on each side. They are the shape of a bean, and are called the kidneys. The blood passes through them, and some of the poisons it has picked up are strained out and sent to a storeroom, called the bladder, where they are kept till the brain gives an order to send them away.

HELEN: But there is one thing I would like to know. I can see how blood can run down-hill into our fingers and toes, but I can’t see how it can climb back up to the heart again. Will you please tell me?

MOTHER: The heart is the power that sends it through the arteries to every part of the body, whether it is up-hill or down. Now when the blood has come to the end of its journey, and has reached the tiny hair-like veins of which I told you, more blood keeps coming down and pushes it on till it starts back through the larger veins. The blood keeps crowding behind, and the veins are made in such a way as to help it climb up.

PERCY: But how are they different from the arteries?

MOTHER: Did you ever see little watch-pockets hung in bedrooms in which to put watches? Well, the veins have tiny pockets in them, as you see in the picture.

AMY: But I don’t see how that helps the blood in climbing.

MOTHER: It is this way: If you had a tube with little pockets and should hold it so the top of the pockets was _down_, you could pour anything through it and they would not stop it from passing. But turn the tube the other way, with the pockets _up_, as you see in the picture, and they would catch and hold anything you tried to pour through the tube. It is the same way with the veins and the blood. If the blood should try to go back, the pockets would fill full and hold it, but when it is passing up toward the heart, they let it slip by without holding it back.

ELMER: Then the blood keeps going round and round in the body, and never stops.

MOTHER: Yes; and this “going round and round,” as you say, is called the cir-cu-la´tion. This drop of blood would have kept going until it was used up in mending your body and helping keep it alive, if it had not slipped out through the cut in Amy’s finger into the world in which you live and move.

I know you have all enjoyed hearing how the blood travels through the body. Let me tell you a little story I read of what a boy said in school. His teacher asked him to tell the class how the blood cir´cu-lates, or goes round and round.

“Please, sir,” said the lad, “the blood goes down one leg and up the other.”

“Very clever of it, I am sure,” said the teacher. “_How does it get across?_”

Perhaps that was something the boy had not thought of, and I am sure you would never give such an answer as that since you have heard the story of a drop of blood. Let us see the cut finger where it came out.

AMY: It doesn’t bleed at all now, mother.

MOTHER: No; and that makes me think to tell you something else about this wonderful caretaker. If we had a quart of blood and should let it stand awhile, it would become thick like jelly. But if you should take a bundle of twigs and keep stirring it round and round, it would not get thick at all. If you looked at your bundle of twigs after stirring the blood with it, you would find the twigs covered with a sticky substance. If you should wash them, you would wash away the red color, and would have left a soft, stringy mass all matted together.

HELEN: But what is it good for?

MOTHER: It is called fibrin, and if it were not in the blood, you would bleed to death if you cut yourself. So long as the blood stays in the body, the fibrin goes quietly with it wherever it goes; but if it begins to run away, as it did from Amy’s finger, the fibrin goes to work at once to cork up the place so it can not get out.

PERCY: How long does it take the blood to go from the heart through the body and back again, mother?

MOTHER: I am sure you will be surprised when I tell you that the heart sends it with such force that it will go to the farthest part and get back in from three to eight minutes, and some say it takes even less time than that.

ELMER: What! so quickly as that! It does not seem possible.

MOTHER: And though one-eighth of the body is blood, yet it will _all_ pass through the heart in about the same time.

HELEN: How wonderful! But I don’t see how all these little things in the blood, called cor´pus-cles, can get through the tiny, hair-like veins, which are so small.

MOTHER: We can learn a useful lesson from them, and you would be pleased, I know, to watch them, if they were only large enough so you could. They seem to know just what they want to do, and where they ought to go. When the little veins are too small for more than one to go in at a time, they do not push or crowd one another. One row waits as politely as can be till the others have passed in, and then they follow. How wonderful it is to think of this river of life flowing round and round, and we feel nothing of it but the gentle tap, tap of the heart as it sends it bounding through every part of the body! Should it stop, we would die; for “the blood is the life.”

PERCY: But how did people find out that the blood goes around as it does?

MOTHER: A doctor in England, named Harvey, first discovered it. Before his time people thought air went around through the body in the arteries. Men have studied the subject since Dr. Harvey lived, and they keep learning more about it all the time.

AMY: Does water go into the blood, mother?

MOTHER: Yes; it very quickly finds its way there, and it is the same with strong drinks, such as beer and whisky. It only takes a very few minutes for anything we drink to get into the blood stream.

The walls of the veins and arteries are governed by the nerves of our telephone system. They let just the right amount of blood flow through them all the time. When alcohol gets into the blood, it puts the nerves to sleep, and so too much blood goes into the little veins. You know a man who drinks has a red face. If he drinks a long time, his nose gets so red that it is called a “rum blossom.” This is because so much blood goes to his nose that it becomes large and red. Alcohol also makes the walls of the arteries weak, so they sometimes burst open and the person dies.

Now that we have learned a few things about the blood, we must be careful what we give this care-taker of the body to eat. We have learned very little of what there is to know, and as you grow older I hope you will study and learn more.

THE BATHROOM

HELEN: I have been thinking of what you said about the blood being washed every time it made a trip to any part of the body. Where is the bath room in the body-house, mother?

MOTHER: It is a large double room, and it is found in the top part of the trunk, each side of the heart.

PERCY: Why, I thought that was where the lungs are.

MOTHER: So it is; and it is in them that the blood is made clean after every journey it takes through the body.

AMY: But is there water in the lungs in which to wash the blood?

MOTHER: No; and the blood could not be washed in water if there was. It takes air to wash blood. Let us try to learn how it is done; but first we will take a peep into the bath room. There are two ways to get in. One is through the folding doors, the way that our food goes to the kitchen; for you remember there are four or five doors back of the pink curtain. In this place the air finds a door standing wide open, and it passes through a passage, called the windpipe, which is about three-fourths of an inch wide, and about four and one-half inches long in grown people. After going through the windpipe it comes to two passages, leading to the two parts of the bath room. While we might call it a double bath room, yet it is really two rooms.

ELMER: That must be the right and left lungs.

MOTHER: That is right. But I must not forget to tell you that there is another way to reach the lungs, and that is through two little doors, always standing open, just above the folding doors which lead to the kitchen. The air finds a long, curved passage to go through, and this is much the better way to go, because if it goes in cold, it passes some places where it gets warm before reaching the bath room. You know it would be rather hard to wash clothes in cold water, and so it is much better to have warm than cold air in which to cleanse the blood.

HELEN: You mean it passes through the nostrils in the nose.

MOTHER: Yes; and another reason why this is the best way for it to go is because the air is filtered or strained through some little hairs, which do their best to keep any dirt or dust which may be in the air from going further. These passages open back of the pink curtain, and it goes down through the windpipe the same as though it had passed through the mouth.

PERCY: But I should think our food would go into the bath room instead of the kitchen.

MOTHER: It would, only that, as soon as it starts for the kitchen, there is a little trap-door which feels it coming, and it shuts down quickly over the air passage, so nothing can get through. Suppose the trap-door does not do its duty quickly enough, and food “goes the wrong way,” as we sometimes say, the person chokes and has a bad time till the food is out of the way. I once saw a fowl eating corn, and in some way a kernel got into her windpipe. She began hopping about in great distress, and died as quickly as though her head had been cut off. It sometimes happens that people are choked to death in the same way.

HELEN: But how does the bath room look?

MOTHER: It is a pretty pink color and seems much like a very fine sponge. If we could go inside we should find the passages divided again and again, till there are thousands and thousands of tiny air tubes, each ending in a little pouch quite like a bunch of grapes, only you should think of the grapes as being as small as a grain of sand. When the lungs are full of air, they grow larger, and when we breathe it out, they grow small.

ELMER: That is like a pair of bellows.

MOTHER: Very much the same, and the bellows will help us understand how we breathe. Try to think of a little tree with its trunk, limbs, and leaves all hollow. If air were blown through the trunk, it would make every leaf puff out, and when no air was blown in, they would fall together again. It is the same with our lungs. They keep swelling out and falling together about eighteen times every minute.

AMY: But how is the blood washed in air, mother?

MOTHER: Perhaps it would be better to say it is aired, the same as we hang a garment in the sunshine and wind to make it fresh and sweet. You will remember that the blood takes oxygen, which is a part of the air, to every part of the body-house, and this makes it warm. In exchange the muscles give the blood a poison called carbonic acid gas. This gives the blood a dark, purplish color, and it must carry away the gas and get more oxygen before it can do any more work in mending the body.

PERCY: But I would like to know how it gets into the bath room.

MOTHER: The right side of the heart, which has nothing but soiled blood in it all the time, sends it to the lungs in a hurry, and it fills the thousands of hair-like veins which are in every part of the lungs. The walls of the veins are so thin that the oxygen in the lungs soaks through into the blood, and the poison in the blood goes through into the air, and is breathed out of the body. Do you understand it now?

PERCY: I think so.

MOTHER: If I should tie a piece of bladder over a glass of milk and place the glass in a bucket of water, the milk would come through into the water, and the water would pass into the milk, even though they were in separate dishes. Another way to show how the blood is cleansed would be to say that blood and air keep running near together, each in its own room, and as they pass they say, “Good-day;” air washes blood so it becomes bright and clean, and blood makes air very dirty with its poison gas; and, after trading in this way, both hurry along as fast as they came in.

ELMER: It must be that good air is needed more than good food.

MOTHER: Why, yes; for while we need to eat only two or three times a day, we must take in air more than twenty-five thousand times. If we could not breathe for six or seven minutes, we would die, while we could live without food quite a number of days. How thankful we ought to be for pure, fresh air! And there is so much of it that we can have it without money and without price.

HELEN: Which is best, to breathe through the nose or the mouth?

MOTHER: Through the nose; for that was made for the air to pass through. Serious sickness of the throat and lungs is sometimes caused by breathing through the mouth. When the air goes this way, the person makes a very strange noise when asleep. The air seems to be trying to wake somebody up to shut the folding doors so it can go the right way. We call it snoring.

PERCY: I should think when there are so many people and animals, and all must have air to breathe, that it would soon become unfit to use.

MOTHER: We live in an ocean of air, as fishes live in the sea. The winds sweep it round and round, and everything that grows helps to make it pure.

AMY: How can that be?

MOTHER: It may be said that plants breathe, as well as people, only they need the poison gas we breathe out, and they give out the oxygen we need to breathe in. There is no danger but we can get all the air we need if we will let it into our rooms.

ELMER: But isn’t night air bad to breathe, mother?

MOTHER: No; for when it is night we can get nothing but night air. It is true that if air is shut up in a room it soon becomes unfit to breathe, whether it is night or day.

PERCY: On frosty mornings my breath looks like steam as it comes out. Is that the poison gas, mother?

MOTHER: No; we can not see the gas, but what you see is the water we breathe out. We take in about a pint of air at every breath, and it is said that every time we breathe out we spoil half a barrelful of air, making it unfit to breathe. I will let you find out how many barrelfuls of fresh air we would need in an hour.

PERCY: Why, that would be over five hundred barrels! Who ever thought that we needed such a lot of fresh air in just one hour!

MOTHER: And who, then, would think of using only one roomful in a whole night! It is no wonder that many people have a headache when they wake in the morning.

HELEN: But, mother, we can’t get clean air always, even when we are not in the house. This very day a man puffed tobacco smoke into my face as I was passing him.

AMY: But do you think it is _right_, mother, for any one to poison the pure, fresh air God has given us, with tobacco smoke, and make it unfit to use?

MOTHER: No; I do not; and a true gentleman will not do it. It is both rude and wrong. He not only wrongs others but harms himself. You know how it feels to get smoke into your eyes, and it is just as bad for the throat and lungs. Bad smells of any kind poison the air, making it unfit to breathe, so we should be careful to keep our rooms and everything about the house sweet and clean.

PERCY: I met a man in the street, and I could smell the whisky he had drunk. Did that come from his lungs?

MOTHER: Yes; just as soon as strong drink is swallowed, every part of the body tries to get rid of it. The alcohol in such drinks makes the thin walls of the lungs hard, so they can not make the blood clean, and they try to throw out the poison. Sometimes it causes that dreadful disease, consumption, which can not be cured.

HELEN: Don’t a great many people die of consumption?

MOTHER: Yes; it kills more people than any other disease; so every one should take good care of their lungs, and give them plenty of room to grow. They should also breathe pure, fresh air at all times.

ELMER: But you can’t squeeze the lungs. We must have room to breathe.

MOTHER: But we can squeeze the stomach and liver so that the lungs do not have room, and by stooping over when sitting or walking, we get round shoulders and narrow chests, and this causes the lungs to become small and diseased.

AMY: I once read how some people on a ship suffered for fresh air.

MOTHER: Please tell us about it.

AMY: One night when there was a storm the captain told the sailors to send the people down into a large room below deck so they would not be in the way. After they had gone, the doors were fastened, so they could not get out. When the storm was over, the sailors took a candle and opened the door, but when they went in, the candle went out. At last enough fresh air got in so the candle would burn. They found the poor people lying on the floor, and quite a number of them were dead.

MOTHER: I suppose they had no air to breathe only that which had been used over and over again, and as that was not fresh, it poisoned them so they died. We should learn from this sad story to keep the lungs well filled with good air; for the blood can not be well cleansed if it is impure.

HOW THE HOUSE IS HEATED

MOTHER: If you touch a stone, Amy, how does it feel?

AMY: It is cold.

MOTHER: Yes, wood, iron, glass, and all the things around us which do not have life, are cold. If you touch your head, how does it feel?

PERCY: It is warm.

MOTHER: We sometimes see a little glass tube called a thermometer, with figures telling us how warm or how cold the air is. Here is a smaller one that you may hold in your mouth under your tongue, Elmer, and we will see if it will tell us how warm the house you live in is inside. That will do. The glass says it is about ninety-eight degrees. How many degrees will the larger glass record on a hot summer day?

ELMER: It is very warm when it is over eighty or ninety in the shade.

MOTHER: Yet you see that inside the body-house it is nearly one hundred degrees, yet you do not feel too warm. Are all animals warm?

HELEN: If they are alive, they are. If their bodies are cold, we say they are dead.

MOTHER: Some birds and animals have more heat in their bodies than we do. The horse has one hundred degrees, the ox one hundred and one, the dog one hundred and two, the sheep one hundred and four, and the duck and pigeon have one hundred and eight. The bodies of some creatures, such as fishes and frogs, are much cooler than our own, and we call them cold-blooded. The frog has only seventy degrees of heat.

HELEN: But what makes us warm, mother?

MOTHER: Do you remember that we talked a good deal about our food as fuel not long ago?

PERCY: But, mother, fuel is something to _burn_, and there is no fire inside of us.

MOTHER: That is true in one way; but let us see if we can find out where the heat in our bodies comes from. It may be a little hard to understand, but we will try. Here is a candle. If lighted, it burns brightly. Now I will fasten a wire around it and lower it into this glass jar and cover it tightly. Now watch it. What is the matter?

AMY: It is going out. Now it just flickers and hardly burns at all. Why does it go out, mother?

MOTHER: Because all fire must have a part of the air called oxygen to make it burn. When the candle can have plenty of air, it burns brightly, but when shut up closely, where it soon uses all the oxygen, it will not burn at all. Now our bodies are much like the candle. We eat food, and when it is made into blood, it mixes with the oxygen we breathe, and as it goes round and round in the body, it makes heat. The difference between us and the candle is that the burning does not go on as fast in our bodies as in the candle, so there is no flame, and it would take much longer to make the same amount of heat. If you throw a piece of fat into the fire, it will burn. If you eat the fat, it will make just as much heat in your body, but it will last a long time.

PERCY: How queer to think we are burning, bit by bit, just like a candle!

MOTHER: Yes; just as long as we live, the fire is kept going.

AMY: But I shouldn’t think that blood going around with oxygen in it would keep us warm.

MOTHER: If that was the only way to heat the body, it would not. Where it is very cold, some houses have a grate; there may also be a furnace, and perhaps a stove besides. So there are three ways of heating the house we live in. The first, as I have told you, is by the blood carrying oxygen to every part of the body. That is like the grate. We will call the liver the furnace. We have found that all the starch and sweet things we eat are changed into liver sugar, and it is supposed this is used in the lungs to keep the body warm.

HELEN: In what other way is the house heated?

ELMER: I think I know. It is by exercise. When I run or play ball I become very warm.

MOTHER: Yes, when we move quickly, we breathe faster, and the blood goes bounding through every part of the body, so the fire inside burns brightly. Sawing wood is a good way to warm a cold boy, and a broom is a fine helper to warm a cold girl.

AMY: When it is frosty, we can see our breath. Is that the _smoke_ coming from the fire inside, mother?

MOTHER: You may call it that if you like. When a candle burns, it gives off what we call carbonic acid gas, and we breathe out some of the same kind of gas. Water also comes out in the breath like steam from an engine, half a pint or a pint each day.

ELMER: Do some kinds of food make more heat than others?

MOTHER: Yes; all kinds of fatty foods make heat. In very cold countries people can eat more fat and keep well than in warm climates. Esquimaux eat a great deal of fat. A little Esquimau child would eat a tallow candle and enjoy it as much as you would an orange. I once read of some sailors who made a Christmas tree for some of those children in the frozen north. The tree was made of walrus bones tied together, and, instead of popcorn, fruit, and sweetmeats, they hung balls of fat on the tree. The children thought it a great treat, and ate them as quickly as you would eat peaches.

AMY: How funny! But, mother, are not our bodies warmer in summer than in winter?

MOTHER: You _feel_ warmer, it is true; but, no matter how hot or cold the weather may be, the body has always about the same warmth. I said _always_, but I mean when we are well. Sometimes we put the wrong kind of fuel into the furnace, and it makes a big fire, the house gets very hot, and we say we have a “fever.” If we get two or three degrees cooler than we should be, that shows that something is wrong, too.

HELEN: But what keeps us the same whether it is hot or cold?

MOTHER: You know some stoves have dampers to govern the heat. When the body is in danger of becoming too warm, that is, when the body is well, all the little waste-pipes in the covering of our house pour out water so the skin is damp or moist, and if very warm it is wet. We might say we have thousands of little “dampers” to keep the heat just right. As the sweat dries, the body becomes cool; so in summer and in hot climates the people sweat much. In winter and in cold countries they perspire but little, and the tiny waste-pipes close as tightly as they can to keep the cold out and the heat inside.

PERCY: But when I had a cold my skin was hot and dry. Why did not the little dampers make me cool, then?

MOTHER: Because they were clogged so they could not. After a warm foot-bath and a hot lemon drink, you began to sweat and soon became well. If nothing had been done to open the waste-pipes, you might have had a serious illness.

ELMER: Does alcohol make the body warm? I once heard a man say it was so cold that he must take something to keep him from freezing, as he had a long journey before him.

MOTHER: I am sure he did not know the effect of wine or alcohol or he would not have said that. When first taken, these stimulants drive the blood to the skin, and we _feel_ warmer; but soon the blood goes back, after being chilled, and the whole body becomes colder. No, alcohol in any of its forms will not “keep out the cold,” as people sometimes think. Men in frozen countries endure the cold much better when they take no strong drink of any kind.

HELEN: I once read of a party of twenty-six men who lost their way as night came on. It was very, very cold, and they had no way of making a fire. Each man had two blankets and plenty of food and whisky. Their leader told them to let the whisky alone; to eat supper, and then wrap up in their blankets and lie closely together. But only two besides himself did as he said, and, though they were cold, they did not suffer or freeze. The others thought the whisky would keep them warm. Three drank a very little, and they did not freeze. Seven others, who drank more, had their toes and fingers frozen. Six, who drank still more, were so badly frozen that they never got over it. Four, who became drunk, were frozen so that they soon died; and three, who drank so much that they became “dead drunk,” were dead in the morning.

MOTHER: That was surely a good test, showing how much alcohol can do toward keeping the body warm.

PERCY: Why do we need clothes to keep us warm? The birds and animals don’t wear any?

MOTHER: I think they do. The birds have a cloak of feathers, which they puff out to keep them warm when it is cold. The horse and cow have coats of hair. The sheep has a thick woolen dress. Animals living where it is very cold have warm suits of fur. Our skin is not covered as theirs is, and our bodies would lose much heat if exposed to the air. Food makes heat, and our clothes keep us from losing it. We need clothing to keep us warm.

HELEN: But people do not need clothing in warm countries.

MOTHER: And they do not wear much; but we would need it if there, to keep the hot sun from scorching the skin. We should never wear heavy clothing, and it should be made so loose that it will not hinder the growth or movements of the body. The shoulders should carry its weight. When the warm days of spring come, it is not best to be in a hurry to leave off our warm under-clothing. Many persons have died because of doing so.

AMY: Should our clothes be changed often?

MOTHER: At least those worn next the skin should be, in order that we may keep neat and clean. Clothes worn in the daytime should not be worn at night, and nightclothes and bedclothes should be kept fresh and well aired. If the clothing we are wearing gets wet, it should be changed at once. Never wear wet shoes or stockings or wet clothing of any kind. Which part of the body do you think should have the warmest clothing?

AMY: The part farthest from the heart; for that would get colder than any other.

MOTHER: Yes, the limbs should be warmly clad; for the blood often gets chilled before it reaches the fingers and toes, and that is why they get cold sooner than do other parts of the body. Yet I have seen many little boys and girls with warm coats and furs around the chest, where there is the most heat, and a part of the tender limbs had no clothing. That is like trying to keep the furnace warm, and letting the rooms farther away have no heat at all.

PERCY: I should think children dressed in that way would be ill.

MOTHER: Many of them are. They often have bad colds, and sometimes the lungs get so much blood, because it is chilled away from the parts to which it should go, that they can not do their work properly; the throat becomes sore, and the poor child may lose its life because the mother did not know how to dress it. Your father, though he is a strong man, would suffer if clothed in that way. Let us see if we can not make some good rules for clothing the body.

ELMER: I will make the first, which is, Wear loose, light clothing.

AMY: Then don’t be in a hurry in the spring to change warm clothes for those that are cooler.

HELEN: We should keep all our clothing neat and clean.

PERCY: That which is worn in the daytime should not be worn at night.

AMY: That makes me think of another: Nightclothes and bedclothes should be fresh and well aired.

ELMER: And we should change our wet clothes for dry ones.

PERCY: The limbs should be as warmly dressed as any part of the body.

MOTHER: Well done. I think these are all good rules. Let us see how well we can keep them.

THE MUSIC ROOM

MOTHER: Do you think of any musical instruments which need air when they make a sound?

PERCY: The cornet, flute, and horn.

AMY: And the organ, too.

MOTHER: Yes; all of these and others as well must have air to make sound. But I wanted to tell you that in the wonderful house we live in there is the most perfect organ you can imagine. I am sure there is none like it, none that can make such sweet music, and I have seen many, and heard the largest pipe-organ in the world.

HELEN: Where can it be?

MOTHER: And it not only makes the finest, sweetest music, but it can laugh and talk. Sometimes its tone is soft and sweet, but it can be made loud and harsh if the master wishes. This curious little organ has a room all to itself, and--

ELMER: Do you mean the voice?

MOTHER: There! you guessed it the first time.

AMY: Where is the organ, mother?

MOTHER: In the top of the windpipe, in the throat. It is really a part of the windpipe itself, and this curious little room has walls at the sides, but no floor. The little trap-door which keeps food from going to the bath room forms the top of the music room.

PERCY: How large is it?

MOTHER: It is larger in men than in women, and you can see the front part in a boy’s throat. Sometimes it is called “Adam’s apple.” I once read that perhaps the reason it has this name is because when Adam was eating his apple he was in such a hurry to blame Eve for giving it to him that a quarter stuck in his throat. We know that he laid the blame on Eve for his eating the forbidden fruit, but whether it was apples or some other kind of fruit I do not know, so you need not believe this story.

ELMER: But I would like to know what causes all the different sounds which are made by the voice.

MOTHER: I will try to make it as plain as I can. Near the top of this room two cords are stretched across from front to back. These cords stretch like India-rubber, so they can be made tight or loose. There is an open space between them, where the air can pass through, but the other space is filled up. Did you ever see the little piece of brass in an organ called a “reed”?

HELEN: I saw one when our organ was cleaned.

MOTHER: Here is a picture of one. You see it has a little tongue, and when air is blown through the opening in the reed, the tongue vibrates, that is, it goes up and down so fast that you can hardly see it, and this makes the sound. The smaller the tongue, the faster it will vibrate, and the tone will be higher.

AMY: But how is it that we can speak and sing low or high?

MOTHER: Our lungs are like the bellows of the organ, and the voice cords are like the reeds. When the master of the body wants to speak low, he sends an order to some muscles in the throat to let the cords hang loose. If he wishes a high tone, he tells them to stretch the cords tight. If he would make no sound, the cords hang loosely, and the air passes between them without making any sound.

ELMER: How strange that, with only two cords, we can make nearly all tones made by the piano, which has so many!

MOTHER: That shows how much better God can make anything than men can. Perhaps the violin is more like the voice; for it can make more tones on fewer cords; but, though it can be made to produce very sweet sounds, it can not be compared to a trained voice, which can speak words and make music at the same time.

HELEN: I’m glad I can talk and sing.

MOTHER: The voice is a gift of God. How we pity a person who is dumb! Every one should learn to speak in a clear, gentle voice. A harsh word wounds the one to whom it is spoken; and the tone often strikes deeper than the words. We have all felt soothed and comforted by kind, pleasant words. All who can should learn to sing.

“If you have a pleasant thought,
Sing it, sing it;
Like the birdies in their sport,
Sing it from the heart.”

“It is not so much what you say,
As the manner in which you say it;
It is not so much the language you use,
As the _tones_ in which you convey it.

“‘Come here,’ I sharply said,
And the baby cowered and wept;
‘Come here,’ I cooed, and he looked and smiled,
And straight to my lap he crept.

“The words may be mild and fair,
And the tones may pierce like a dart;
The words may be soft as the summer air,
And the tones may break the heart.

“For words but come from the mind,
And grow by study and art;
But the tones leap forth from the inner self,
And reveal the state of the heart.

“Whether you know it or not,
Whether you mean or care--
Gentleness, kindness, love, and hate,
Envy, and anger are there.

“Then, would you quarrels avoid,
And in peace and love rejoice,
Keep anger not only out of your words,
But keep it out of your voice.”

THE HEARING PASSAGE

MOTHER: While we have but one voice room, we have two hearing rooms or passages, and they are the most wonderful of any you ever did see. One is placed on each side of the head.

ELMER: Those are the ears, I know. Please let us send a sound through them, mother, and you tell us what it finds.

MOTHER: Very well; and we will suppose this sound has eyes as well as a tongue, and it will tell us what it sees. Now listen:—

All sounds are made of such tiny waves, so very, very small, that you can never see them, yet they are something like those you see when you throw a stone into the pond. The first thing a sound finds when it wishes to visit the master of the body-house, is a pretty porch just outside of the passage made for it to enter.

AMY: What does it look like?

MOTHER: Something like a shell, and it is a pretty, pale pink color. I suppose it was made this shape so it can catch and hold sound; for I have seen some people living in old houses put up their hand to make the porch larger so they could hear better.

PERCY: I have often seen grandfather do that, but I never knew why before.

MOTHER: Each sound finds a little door, which always stands open, and, though it is very small, the sound finds no trouble to get inside. This part of the passage is covered with sticky yellow wax, which is there to keep out anything which should try to go in except different kinds of sounds.

ELMER: How long is the passage?

MOTHER: Only about an inch, and it seems quite like a tunnel dug in a rock, only this is made in bone instead of stone. At the end there is a round curtain, which is drawn close and tight, like the head of a drum, so nothing but sound can get through.

PERCY: But what I would like to know is how the sound can get inside.

MOTHER: Oh, there is nothing hard about that! It may seem quite like a fairy story, but all it has to do is to knock, and then it is on the other side.

HELEN: How strange! And what does it find there?

MOTHER: Things you would never expect to see, I am sure: First, a hammer, that strikes with its handle end on the curtain, or ear-drum, as soon as sound gives a knock, and with the other end it strikes a little anvil, and the anvil kicks against a tiny stirrup. Here is a picture of them. They are all made of bone.

ELMER: Well, this beats anything we have heard yet.

MOTHER: I don’t wonder you say so; for the wisest men, who have studied the body-house for years, say the ear is one of the most wonderful parts of the body. When boys or girls have two drums, two hammers, two anvils, and two stirrups in their heads, it is no wonder that it takes plenty of noise to make them happy.

It makes me think of two little fellows I saw playing with a toy engine a few days ago. They had their mother’s knitting-needles in the smoke-stack, and as they dragged the toy over the floor, it made a fine jingle. The mother, however, wished to talk with a lady friend, and asked them to take out the needles, so they would not disturb her. “But it won’t make any n-o-i-s-e then,” said the older boy in a whining tone. I suppose the noise was a delight to all the tiny hammers and anvils in his ears; and it is much the same with every boy.

But I forgot to tell you that there is a way to reach the inside of the ear without going through the ear-drum.

AMY: Please tell us how.

MOTHER: By going the same way that air takes to go to the lungs; you will find a little door just before you come to the music room, which leads to the ear.

PERCY: But why should there be _two_ passages to get to the inside?

MOTHER: For the very good reason that air is so heavy; if it should press against the ear-drum, it would break it, unless there was something to press just as much against the other side. So some nice, warm air goes up from the throat, and as it is just as heavy as the air outside, it makes the weight alike on both sides.

I once heard of a girl who was asked how air could get inside of the drum of the ear, and she said, “Through the _other_ ear.” Her mates in school all laughed at such a thoughtless answer. You will now know better than to make such a statement if the question were asked you.

PERCY: But I would like to know what else a sound finds in the ear besides hammers, anvils, and stirrups.

MOTHER: I think you can understand what I say better if you look closely at this picture. This is very much larger than the ear inside your own head. You will see that there are tiny tunnels running every way, some shaped like loops, and one of them very much like the inside of a shell which winds round and round.

HELEN: And are all these little tunnels empty?

MOTHER: No; they are filled with clear water. If you had a very strong mi´cro-scope you would see some things in the ear which would fill you with wonder. First of all we find a little bag floating in the water, made of fine skin, that just fits into all the loops and tunnels. What do you suppose is in this tiny bag?

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

MOTHER: It is full of water, too, but it takes only a drop to fill it. Though this dainty bag is so small, yet there is room for some little stones in it, which we will call ear-stones. The picture shows the road sound travels, only this is much larger than the ear really is.

PERCY: I should think it would get lost before it finds the end of all these winding passages.

MOTHER: It has no trouble in finding its way, and finding it quickly, too. Suppose we start now from the outside porch again, so you will not forget the road. First, it goes through the ear passage and knocks against the ear-drum. This makes the handle inside strike the drum, and the other end hits the anvil; the anvil makes the stirrup tremble; and as sound passes along, that makes the water with the little ear-stones in it tremble also.

ELMER: But what I want to know is how the sound gets into the brain so the master knows what it has to tell him. I don’t see any use of its going through all those tunnels and staying there.

MOTHER: You may be sure it does not stay there unless there is something wrong with the ear. One of the wires from your telephone system, which you call nerves, passes through a little hole in the skull, and it spreads out on the inside of the tunnels, and all sounds are carried by these nerves into the brain. As soon as one goes in, the master knows what kind of sound it is.

AMY: I don’t see why it should go through so many tunnels.

MOTHER: I suppose He that formed the ear knows why, but I don’t. A very high sound goes through the shell tube. A very loud sound travels through the loops.

HELEN: I suppose sweet sounds please the master of the house most, such as good music.

MOTHER: Yes; he does not often like loud, harsh sounds. Pleasant tones please him so much that he will sometimes sit for hours listening to them. People talk much about the in´stru-ments of music they have made; but they are nothing when compared with the in´stru-ment God made for hearing them.

This shows us that we should be very careful of our ears, that they may not be injured and we lose our hearing. We should never strike a child on the head or ears; for it may make him deaf. I know a young man whose grandfather “boxed his ears” when he was a little child, and from that time he began to lose his hearing. When we think what the world would be to us if we were not able to hear the songs of the birds, the voices of those we love, and all the other sounds which give us pleasure, it should cause us to guard our ears from the slightest injury.

SOME WONDERFUL WINDOWS

MOTHER: I told you some time ago that the body-house has two windows through which the master looks at what is going on around him; for he never goes outside as long as he lives.

HELEN: Oh, I remember! Those are the eyes.

MOTHER: Yes; and you may be sure that the One who made the house did not forget to make it to enjoy the light. The Bible says, “The light of the body is the eye.” Most dwelling-houses have quite a number of windows, but though ours has but two, they are so made and placed in such a way that the master can see in every direction. Of what shape is the eye?

AMY: It is nearly round, like a ball.

MOTHER: Now see how many ways you can look without moving your head.

ELMER: Up and down, to either side, and in a circle.

MOTHER: And by turning the body we can look any way we please. There is a fly which is said to have twenty-five thousand eyes, but even with so many it can not see more than we can with two, if we turn the head. Another thing which shows the wisdom of our heavenly Father is the position of our eyes. How strange it would seem if they were in the palms of our hands, or in the side or back of the head, or any other place in the body than just where they are!

PERCY: Just think of it! Why, they would get hurt, and how strange we would look!

MOTHER: But we can see only the front part of the eye. Why would it not be as well to have eyes shaped like these?

PERCY: We could not roll them every way, as we can now, and they would not look well.

MOTHER: Then you think they have the very best shape they could have. I think so, too. Now you may each feel around your eyes and tell what you find.

AMY: There is hard bone all around them.

HELEN: They seem to be in a hollow place in the skull.

MOTHER: Yes; and this hollow place is called a socket. They are placed this way to protect them from harm, as we would place precious jewels in a strong casket. The eye, like a round ball, fills the socket or cave in which it lives and moves, and behind and around it is a soft cushion of fat.

ELMER: A ball hit my eye to-day, and it just seemed to go in, so it didn’t hurt much. This must be because it was resting on such a soft cushion.

MOTHER: And we see how the eyes are kept from in´ju-ry, too, by the little porches, or eyebrows, above. The stiff hairs, like a hairy arch, keep the sweat from running into them, and they also add beauty to the face. Then there is a pair of curtains for each one.

AMY: I know what they are,--the eyelids.

MOTHER: And like a double curtain, or shutter, they close to keep the eyes from harm whenever danger is near. Quick as thought they shut tightly together; and each one has a hairy fringe to keep out dust or other objects hurtful to the eyes. Each of these curtains, or awnings, is placed in charge of two servant muscles, one to raise, the other to lower it, and they play up and down without noise or a hitch anywhere.

HELEN: And when we go to sleep, they softly close the window until we wake again.

MOTHER: These windows in our house also wash and keep themselves clean. There is a tiny factory above the eye, where tears are made. Perhaps you have often wondered where tears came from, and now you know. As the eyelids move up and down, the tears keep running over the eye, which makes it move so easily in the socket that it does not ache or wear out, and they keep it clean and bright. There is a little drain-pipe opening on the inner side of each lower eyelid, which carries away the tears into the nose after they are used. If we are sad or unhappy, sometimes so many tears are made that they can not pass through these drains, and then they run over the eyelids down the cheeks. There are also some little factories in the eyelids which make an oil for the edges of the lids, so they will not stick together, and to keep the tears from running over the face.

PERCY: I never knew before where the tears came from, and that they were being made and used all the time.

HELEN: Nor I. Not long ago I read about a little girl named Margie who never cried when any small mishap came to her. But one day her best-loved dolly fell and got a dreadful bruise on her nose. Margie winked hard a few minutes, and then buried her face in her mother’s lap, sobbing, “O mama, I don’t _want_ to cry, but _all my tears have come unfastened!_”

MOTHER: Poor child! she was nearer the truth than she thought; and no doubt many folks, big and little, would be glad sometimes if they could keep their tears fastened up better. Have you ever thought why your eyes do not fall out when you bend over?

AMY: They must be fastened in tight.

MOTHER: That is true; for they are held by six little muscles, whose work it is to keep them in place and move them about.

ELMER: But what is inside of the eye, mother?

MOTHER: Let us look at the outside a little longer before we talk of the inside. Because the colored part of the eye is round, it is called the eyeball. It is with this part we see. The white part of the eye is filled with a clear substance, quite like jelly, and it has several strong coats or coverings outside. What part of the eye do you think we see through?

HELEN: The black spot in the center.

MOTHER: What is it called?

PERCY: The pupil.

MOTHER: Now look into each other’s eyes. What do you see around the pupil?