Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/608

592 it becomes an absolute necessity. A certain percentage of such boys will be found in every school—boys who, if denied considerable range of choice in their food, will at least fail to thrive in the midst of plenty.

A boy's chief meal should always consist of two courses, meat and pudding. Many boys, being small meat-eaters, should at least have the chance of "making up" with something further, and good reason can be given why this something should be a well-sweetened pudding or tart; if containing fresh or preserved fruit, so much the better. All boys as a rule dislike meat fat and leave it on their plates, and it is a barbarous practice to try to make them eat it. And yet the same fat in a different guise, embodied with flour in a well-cooked pudding, they as universally like. All boys, again, love sugar and the juices of fresh vegetables or fruits, and it is a grave mistake not to secure a fair proportion of these elements in their daily food. Now, a well-made fruit-pudding or tart combines these several elements in happy proportion and palatable form; and boys' universal liking for this article of diet is simply the practical expression of the physiological truth that fat and its chemical allies, starch and sugar, together with certain organic acids and salts, are indispensable to the healthy constitution of the blood; in other words, to the due building up and maintenance of the fabric of the body.

A boy who has dined at 1 or 1.30 is ready by 6 o'clock for something more than the eternal tea and bread-and-butter. He keenly relishes at this meal some little variety or addition, such as plain homemade cake, or some preserve, or a bit of whatever salad-herb may be in season. The dietetic value of salad-herbs (lettuce, water-cress, etc.) to growing boys is out of all proportion to their cost. Where there is a kitchen-garden (which every school should have), they practically cost nothing. Where they have to be bought, they need not cost much; and, even if they do, they will be worth the price.

Should boys have supper? Up to about twelve years of age they rarely need it, for boys of this age by 9 o'clock are ready for bed, and should be in bed; but from thirteen or fourteen onward boys much dislike being sent to bed so early, and if they do, say, one and a half or two hours' work after tea, they feel the want of, and ought to have, a light meal between 8 and 9 o'clock.

In the dietary above quoted it will probably excite surprise that no beer or other stimulant is allowed either at dinner or at any other meal or time in the day, except in special cases where a boy's health is