Leave the beds to get fresh On the close crowded floor Let the wind sweep right through-- Open window and door The bad air will rush out As the good air comes in, Just as goodness is stronger And better than sin. Do this, it's soon done, In the fresh morning air, It will lighten your labour And lessen your care You are weary--no wonder, There's weight and there's gloom Hanging heavily round In each over full room. Be sure all the trouble Is profit and gain For there's head ache and heart-ache, And fever and pain Hovering round, settling down In the closeness and heat Let the wind sweep right through Till the air's fresh and sweet, And more cheerful you'll feel Through the toil of the day, More refreshed you'll awake When the night's paved away" [Footnote: _Household Verses on Health and Happiness_ London. Jarrold and Sons. Every mother should read these _Verses_.] Plants and flowers ought not to be allowed to remain in a chamber at night. Experiments have proved that plants and flowers take up, in the day-time, carbonic acid gas (the refuse of respiration), and give off oxygen (a gas so necessary and beneficial to health), but give out, in the night season, a poisonous exhalation. Early rising cannot be too strongly insisted upon; nothing is more conducive to health and thus to long life. A youth is frequently allowed to spend the early part of the morning in bed, breathing the impure atmosphere of a bedroom, when he should be up and about, inhaling the balmy and health-giving breezes of the morning:-- "Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed: The breath of night's destructive to the hue Of ev'ry flower that blows. Go to the field, And ask the humble daisy why it sleeps Soon as the sun departs? Why close the eyes Of blossoms infinite long ere the moon Her oriental veil puts off? Think why, Nor let the sweetest blossom Nature boasts Be thus exposed to night's unkindly damp. Well may it droop, and all its freshness lose, Compell'd to taste the rank and pois'nous steam Of midnight theatre and morning ball Gire to repose the solemn hour she claims; And from the forehead of the morning steal The sweet occasion. Oh! there is a charm Which morning has, that gives the brow of age, a smack of youth, and makes the lip of youth Shed perfume exquisite. Expect it not Ye who till noon upon a down-bed lie, Indulging feverish sleep."--_Hurdis_.