As to quantity, with the healthy child, playing at will, there need be very little restraint.  Few children will eat too much of perfectly simple food, such as this table includes.  Let cake or pastry or sweetmeats enter in, and of course, as long as the thing tastes good, the child will beg for more.  English children are confined to this simple diet; and though of course a less exacting climate has much to do with the greater healthfulness of the English than the American people, the plain but hearty and regular diet of childhood has far more.

Our young American of seven, at a hotel breakfast, would call for coffee and ham and eggs and sausages and hot cakes.  His English cousin would have no liberty to call for anything.  In fact, it is very doubtful if he would be brought to table at all; and if there, bread and milk or oatmeal and milk would form his meal.

By this time I do not doubt our baby has your heartiest pity, and you are saying, “What! no snacks? no cooky nor cake nor candy? no running to aunt or grandmother or tender-hearted cook for goodies?  If that must be so, half the pleasure of childhood is lost.”

Perhaps; but suppose that with that pleasure some other things are also lost.  Suppose our baby to have begun life with a nervous, irritable, sensitive organization, keenly alive to pain, and this hard regimen to have covered these nerves with firm flesh, and filled the veins with clean, healthy blood.  Suppose headache is unknown, and loss of appetite, and a bad taste in the mouth, and all the evils we know so well; and that work and play are easy, and food of the simplest eaten with solid satisfaction.  The child would choose the pleasant taste, and let health go, naturally; for a child has small reason, and life must be ordered for it.  But if the mother or father has no sense or understanding of the laws of food, it is useless to hope for the wholesome results that under the diet of our baby are sure to follow.

By seven some going to school has begun; and from this time on the diet, while of the same general character, may vary more from day to day.  Habits of life are fixed during this time; and even if parents dislike certain articles of food themselves, it is well to give no sign, but as far as possible, accustom the child to eat any wholesome food.  We are a wandering people, and sooner or later are very likely to have circumnavigated the globe, at least in part.  Our baby must have no antipathies, but every good thing given by Nature shall at least be tolerated.  “I never eat this,” or “I never eat that,” is a formula that no educated person has a right to use save when some food actually hurtful or to which he has a natural repulsion is presented to him.  Certain articles of diet are often strangely and unaccountably harmful to some.  Oysters are an almost deadly poison to certain constitutions; milk to others.  Cheese has produced the same effect, and even strawberries; yet all these are luxuries to the ordinary stomach.