Feeding of Children
117
prepared with spices, which have a tendency to excite the animal
passions. By their example they teach their children intemperance
in eating. They have been indulged to eat almost any hour of the
day, which keeps the digestive organs constantly taxed. Mothers have
had but little time to instruct their children. Their precious time was
devoted to cooking various kinds of unwholesome food to place upon
their tables.
Many parents have permitted their children to be ruined while they
were trying to regulate their lives to fashion. If visitors are to come,
they wish to have them sit down to as good a table as they would find
[54]
among any of their circle of acquaintances. Much time and expense
are devoted to this object. For the sake of appearance, rich food is
prepared to suit the appetite, and even professed Christians make so
much parade that they call around them a class whose principal object
in visiting them is for the dainties they get to eat. Christians should
reform in this respect. While they should courteously entertain their
visitors, they should not be such slaves to fashion and appetite.
Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 17
Teach your children to abhor stimulants. How many are ignorantly
fostering in them an appetite for these things! In Europe I have seen
nurses putting the glass of wine or beer to the lips of the innocent little
ones, thus cultivating in them a taste for stimulants. As they grow
older, they learn to depend more and more on these things, till little by
little they are overcome, drift beyond the reach of help, and at last fill
a drunkard’s grave.
But it is not thus alone that the appetite is perverted and made a
snare. The food is often such as to excite a desire for stimulating drinks.
Luxurious dishes are placed before the children,—spiced foods, rich
gravies, cakes, and pastries. This highly seasoned food irritates the
stomach, and causes a craving for still stronger stimulants. Not only
is the appetite tempted with unsuitable food, of which the children
are allowed to eat freely at their meals, but they are permitted to eat
between meals, and by the time they are twelve or fourteen years of
age they are often confirmed dyspeptics.
You have perhaps seen a picture of the stomach of one who is
addicted to strong drink. A similar condition is produced under the