Plain, simple food, well cooked and daintily served, will be as happily received by our families, (if they have not been pampered until their tastes are vitiated and bad habits formed), as the multitude of dishes which are called food, but have no right to the name, which are daily set before many growing boys and girls. The temptation into which many mothers fall of concocting, or allowing to be concocted, “fine” dishes with long sounding names, and which are good for little in nutrition, has much to do in creating depraved appetites which are averse to plain, substantial food, which really builds bodies that are worth the having. We can sympathize heartily with the plain old farmer, whose lament is given in rhyme in a Southern medical journal: “We have a lot of salad things, with dressing mayonnaise: In place of oysters, blue points, fricaseed a dozen ways, And orange roly-poly, float, and peach meringue, alas— Enough to wreck a stomach that is made of plated brass: The good old things have passed away in silent, sad retreat, We’ve a lot of high-falutin things, but nothing much to eat. And while I never say a word, and always pleasant look, I have had sore dyspepsy since my daughter learned to cook.” Well cooked vegetables, bread made from unbolted flour which contains all the nutritive properties, cereals cooked sufficiently, meat—not fried—once a day, plenty of fruit cooked and uncooked, milk and water, should be all that are allowed growing children; and if desserts are given at all, simple puddings, not pie, should be in the dietary. A story is told of a mother who took her twelve-year-old boy to her physician, complaining that he would eat only those things that he should not have, and that he felt so poorly that she could not get him out to play. The wise doctor advised her to take him out for a ride of two miles each day, and compel him to run behind the carriage on the way home. His food should be bread and milk three times daily, allowing positively nothing else for a month. He should be put to bed every night at eight o’clock, and report to him in a month. A few bread pills completed the prescription. The result seemed marvelous to the mother, and the medicine was “wonderful.” It is undoubtedly true that as a rule we eat too much, and are surely too much a meat-eating people for the best results. Meat once daily is by the best authorities on the subject, considered sufficient for our needs. It gives nutritive elements in a more concentrated form, but in this very fact the danger lies. It will be well for us to remember that food effects temperament decidedly, and we need only compare the different temperaments found in flesh eating and herb eating animals to learn the effect a generous meat diet has upon the human family.