As a people we suffer from lack of sufficient rest. We stint ourselves here as nowhere else, and little wonder that we are a nervous, restless people, with worn-out energies in early life. Too many women come to maternity tired and worn, and the result is anything but promising for their children; the chances are that their children are born with a heritage of sleeplessness, and their care is a burden to their mothers and others. There is something fine in our great public, free school system, but to me there is something wofully pathetic also. When I find little tots, from the third grade on, nervous and anxious in the daily rush of lessons, fearing lest they will fall below the imposed standard, and so lose their grade, or be obliged to pass the dreaded examination; going about with fretted, careworn faces, I think it time to cry a halt. It is not the lessons they are crowded through, but the lessons they master that are going to be of value to them. Is there not a-crowding-them-all-into-the-same-mold, a-modeling-them-after-the-same-pattern danger, that takes largely from their individuality, and forbids the evolution of such geniuses as the past generations have known? No doubt we know more than our ancestors, but is it not a question whether we are wiser than they? For this state of things I do not attach blame to the teachers, the curricula of the schools are to blame. This is a part of the everlasting rush of the American race, and what is the remedy? All this nervous strain draws largely upon the physical nature of the child, and produces dwarfed bodies that are nerveless and tired, at the expense of crowded brains. When will our splendid educators see the wrong and devise a better way? But not all the fault lies with the schools. Many of our children are not properly fed and rested when they enter the schoolroom, and the consequence is poor work languidly done. To obviate this, our home-keepers should be truly good cooks, and by this I mean one who knows how to make an appetizing meal from very little, and that little plain. She should know how to cook the plain solid foods in such a manner that her family will call it a royal meal, and their health and physical vigor will prove it so. Like the mother in the little story, “Bread and Cheese and Kisses,” who, when the meal was particularly scant, would say, “well, dearies, we have only bread and cheese and kisses to-night,” whereupon the kisses would be so warm and full of love, and the love pats so tender, that the little ones would sit down with hearts full of content and rise with thanksgiving and gladness.