A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School

organization, and consequently peculiarly exposed to dangers from this source. It is this child who ordinarily becomes the victim to stimulating drinks. The tea and coffee which the parents and the healthier children can use without immediate injury, gradually sap the energies of the feebler child, who proves either an early victim, or a living martyr to all the sufferings that debilitated nerves inflict. Can it be right, to lead children, where all allow that there is some danger, and where, in many cases, disease and death are met, when another path is known to be perfectly safe? Of the stimulating drinks in common use, _black tea_ is least injurious, because its flavor is so strong, in comparison with its narcotic principle, that one who uses it, is much less liable to excess. Children can be trained to love milk and water sweetened with sugar, so that it will always be a pleasant beverage; or, if there are exceptions to the rule, they will be few. Water is an unfailing resort. Every one loves it, and it is perfectly healthful. The impression, common in this Country, that _warm drinks_, especially in Winter, are more healthful than cold, is not warranted by any experience, nor by the laws of the physical system. At dinner, cold drinks are universal, and no one deems them injurious. It is only at the other two meals that they are supposed to be hurtful. There is no doubt that _warm_ drinks are healthful, and more agreeable than cold, at certain times and seasons; but it is equally true, that drinks above blood heat are not healthful. If any person should hold a finger in hot water, for a considerable time, twice every day, it would be found that the finger would gradually grow weaker. The frequent application of the stimulus of heat, like all other stimulants, eventually causes debility. If, therefore, a person is in the habit of drinking hot drinks, twice a day, the teeth, throat, and stomach are gradually debilitated. This, most probably, is one of the causes of an early decay of the