Youthful Health Reformers.
By S. N. HASKELL
I HAVE been stopping, of late, with two families in the southern part of Massachusetts, who are trying to live out the health reform the best they can with the understanding they have. Each family has a number of children; the oldest in one family being fifteen, and in the other fourteen years of age. One thing remarkable is, that these children have adopted the health reform from choice,—from principle. They eat but two meals a day with their parents, because they believe it to be right. When attending school the children of one of these families at first thought that they could not adopt the two-meal system because their dinner came in the wrong time. But finally they chose to do so, and acted accordingly. The neighbors manifested much apparent sympathy for them, and so tried to coax them to eat between meals. But it proved of no avail. They also tried to get them to eat meat, but their attempts were fruitless. The father of this family had sometimes butchered for his neighbors, as well as formerly for himself, and he had taken pains to show his children (his oldest son in particular) the diseased condition of meat of nearly all beef creatures killed. In skinning, grub worms were often cut in two, a portion of the worm being left in the creature to be cooked and eaten by the consumer. This the oldest son had seen. At one time (when younger than he now is) after being repeatedly, and almost constantly, urged to eat a “nice piece of fresh meat;” after he had exhausted his little fund, or nearly so, of arguments in favor of his position, he related what he had seen, and asked the question, “So you think that grub worms and sores are healthy to be eaten?” This was a finishing argument. And do not the young readers of this article think that a possibility of their eating something of this kind is a sufficient reason for their not using meat? Now I have one question I should like to ask the youthful readers of the REVIEW, and I have no objection to the older ones considering the question also addressed to them. Will you not possess that decision of character which these children do, who will eat only two meals a day, and cannot be prevailed upon to eat between meals? Their example, in this respect, is truly worthy of imitation. S. N. HASKELL.