“But, mother, I must have air to breathe,” said Dorian, “and what other kind of air can I have at night?  I might store a little day-air in my room, but I would soon exhaust its life-giving qualities at night.  You know, mother,” he went on in the assurance of his newly acquired knowledge, “I guess the Lord knew what He was about when He enveloped the earth with air which presses down nearly fifteen pounds to the square inch so that it might permeate every possible nook and corner of the globe.”  Then he went on to explain the wonderful process of blood purification in the lungs, and demonstrated to her that the breath is continually throwing off foul matter.  He did this by breathing into a fruit jar, screwing on the lid for a little while, and then having the nose make the test.

“Some bed rooms I’ve gone into smell just like that,” he said.

“Here, mother is a clipping from a magazine.  Listen: 

“’Of all the marvels of God’s workmanship, none is more wondrous than the air.  Think of our all being bathed in a substance so delicate as to be itself unperceived, yet so dense as to be the carriage to our senses of messages from the world about us!  It is never in our way; it does not ask notice; we only know it is there by the good it does us.  And this exquisitely soft, pure, yielding, unseen being, like a beautiful and beneficent fairy, brings us blessings from all around.  It has the skill to wash our blood clean from all foulness.  Its weight keeps us from tumbling to pieces.  It is a reservoir where the waters lie stored, until they fall and gladden the earth.  It is a great-coat that softens to us the heat of the day, and the cold of the night.  It carries sounds to our ears and smells to our nostrils.  Its movements fill Nature with ceaseless change; and without their aid in wafting ships over the sea, commerce and civilization would have been scarce possible.  It is of all wonders the most wonderful.’”

At another time when Dorian had a cold, and consequently, a loss of appetite, his mother urged him to eat more, saying that he must have strength to throw off his cold.

“What is a cold?” he smilingly asked.

“Why, a cold is—­a cold, of course, you silly boy.”

“What does it do to the activities of the body?”

“I’m not a doctor; how can I tell.”

“All mothers are doctors and nurses; they do a lot of good, and some things that are not so good.  For instance, why should I eat more when I have a cold?” She did not reply, and so he went on:  “The body is very much like a stove or a furnace; it is burning material all the time.  Sometimes the clinkers accumulate and stop the draft, both in the human as well as the iron stove.  When that happens, the sensible thing to do is not to throw in more fuel but to clean out the clinkers first.”

“Where did you get all that wisdom, Dorian?”

“I got it from my text book on hygiene, and I think it’s true because it seems so reasonable.”