Page:How and Why Library 419.jpg

 a bruise, a bumped head or a bleeding nose, should be attended to without calling a doctor. Slight ailments, too, can be managed. Any family doctor, for the usual office visit fee, will tell you what things to keep on hand and how to use them. Better still, there are little books written by doctors telling "What to Do in Emergencies." Some of them cost only fifty cents, and can be kept in the medicine closet.

A house should be orderly, quiet and cheerful. Mother works hard to keep everything clean and in place. You know it is bad for anyone to overwork. Most families thoughtlessly overwork the mother by throwing things around, and bringing dirt into the house. Perhaps that is why she is cross sometimes. She is not only overworked, she is worried because the work is never done. If it isn't good for you to lie awake and worry over examinations, it isn't good for mother to worry about how much extra work she has to do tomorrow.

Loud noises really hurt many people. Nerves need rest as well as bones and muscles, brains and stomachs. In cities, street cars and railroad trains, factory whistles and wagons and noisy crowds are always hammering at people's nerves. Homes are the places to rest nerves. So don't slam doors or scrape your chair legs on the floor, or throw your shoes across the room, or shout to someone upstairs. You may yell on a hundred-acre farm, or at a baseball game where everyone else is yelling. Very good people often quarrel and cry about little things, because their nerves are tormented all the time. Watch these danger signals. Sick nerves take along, hard time to cure.

Finally, don't take all your troubles into the house to talk over. Long ago a great poet said: "A merry heart goes all the day, a sad tires in a mile-a." This is just as true as that two times two are four. Laugh and grow fat, and save doctor bills. Laughing exercises the lungs; sour thoughts sour on the stomach. Bring all the cheerful things, the pleasant things, the funny things you come across, into the house. No family is as healthy as it might be unless it is happy.