It is a horrible fact that many of these children whose diet is so unwholesome cannot eat decent food, even when they are most hungry. It is not merely a question of appetite, but of stomachs too weak by reason of chronic hunger and malnutrition to stand good and nutritious food. This has been frequently observed in connection with Fresh Air Outings for poor children in the tenement districts. I have known scores of instances. Very often these children have to be patiently taught to eat. Sometimes it takes several days to induce them to take milk and eggs. They crave for their accustomed food—coffee and bread, or pickles. The same fact has been observed in connection with adults in the hospitals. When the Salvation Army started its free breakfast stations in New York, the newspapers made a good deal of the fact that the children refused to eat the good soup and milk porridge at first provided. That was regarded as conclusive evidence that they were not hungry, for a hungry child is supposed to eat almost anything. That is true in a measure of children who are merely hungry, but these children are more than hungry. They are weak and unhealthy as the result of chronic underfeeding. I myself saw many children at the Salvation Army free breakfast depots whose hunger was only too apparent try bravely to eat the soup until they actually vomited. They would beg for a piece of bread, and when it was given them eat it ravenously. In an uptown school a little English boy fainted one morning while at his lessons. He had fainted the day before in the school yard, but the teacher thought that it was due to overexertion while at play. When he fainted the second time she took him to the principal’s office, and they discovered that he had not eaten anything that day, and only a piece of bread the day before. The principal sent for some milk, and when it was warmed in the school kitchen she gave it to the lad with a couple of dainty chicken sandwiches from her own lunch, expecting him to enjoy a rare treat. But he didn’t. He took only a bite or two and a sup of milk, then began to vomit. He could not be induced to eat any more nor even to drink the milk. Presently, however, he said to the teacher, “I think I could eat some bread, teacher,” and when they sent out for some rolls and coffee he ate as though he had seen no food for a week. Very few people, it may be added, incidentally, realize how much the teachers and principals of schools in the poorest districts give out of their slender incomes to provide children with food, clothing, and shoes. But how little it all amounts to in the way of solving the problem is best expressed in the words of one principal, “What I can give in that way to the worst cases only lessens the evil in just the same degree as a handful of sands taken from the seashore lessens the number of grains.” [Illustration: A COSMOPOLITAN GROUP OF “FRESH AIR FUND” CHILDREN ] VIII