Cleanliness
CLEANLINESS and cleanly you may think are two pretty hard words for little readers to understand.
Ask your parents how to speak them correctly. Cleanliness is from the word cleanly, and cleanly is from the word clean, and you all know what that word means. Mamma tells her. Little boys and girls to wash themselves clean, and how their fair faces shine when free from dirt! She tells the little girls to wash the dishes clean, and oh! How they shine too. We talk about a person's habits of cleanliness, and we mean he is clean and neat in his ways. He is cleanly in person if he keeps his body clean by bathing it often, and putting on clean clothes at proper times. If one speaks of an 'uncleanly person, he means just the opposite,—that he does not have cleanly habits. Almost all of the readers….are children—we like to have said—of health reformers; we meant, ought to be, then they would know all about cleanliness. They would be cleanly in their persons, in their dress, and in their homes.
Everybody can and should be cleanly. Some diseases, like cholera, diphtheria, and a few others, always appear first in uncleanly places. You hear your parents talking about the cholera in Europe, and that it may visit this country by another year. You begin to fear and dread it. But you should rather begin to practice cleanliness in all your ways. We hope your parents take the Good Health. We don't see how anyone can keep house properly without it; for it teaches how to be cleanly, and how to eat and live so as to escape these dreaded diseases. But we want most to talk with you about the uncleanly habit of neglecting the teeth. It is quite common to see persons, and some of them call themselves reformers, who appear very correct in their habits until they speak or laugh, and expose their unclean teeth. One would not think of taking filth into the mouth; and yet when the teeth are not properly brushed, the worst kind of filth collects on them, which injures the health, and greatly disfigures one's looks; and aside from this, it will soon eat through the enamel on the teeth, causing them to ache, and finally to fall out.
"Oh, well! False teeth are cheap now," a lady once said when advised to take care of her teeth. Who would not rather have his own sound teeth than to suffer the pain of having them pulled out and others fitted? False teeth, when well prepared, must be a great blessing to those who have lost their teeth; but anyone who has them would gladly exchange them for his own natural teeth. We want the family to be thoroughly clean, with clean mouths and sweet breath. Save a little from your pin-money, and buy a good tooth-brush; not to lay up out of sight, but to use faithfully several times every day. How many will do this? We would like to hear the response.
When you go away from home, too, be sure to take your tooth-brush with you; and don't let anything prevent your using it. If anything must be neglected, rather let it be your outer garments than your teeth. We could tell you something more about the teeth, which would help you to remember the use of the brush; but it would make this article too long. Finally, dear children, it is a part of the Christian religion to "cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God, "that we may be fit" temples of the Holy Ghost."
M. J. C.
