Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1874 — Regularity, [ARTICLE]

Regularity,

Very few persons understand how greatly health ana happiness in this world depend upon the regularity of daily habits—the constant recurrence of those events which we are apt to refer to as tiresome and monotonous. During the early and later periods of life this “even tenor” is essential to our well-being; and though we may feel-like kicking the traces when at the summit of power and activity, and sometimes fly off at tangents, or get rid of our superfluous energies in odd and eccentric ways, yet we usually come back, or at least try to comeback, to our moorings, and gladly accept the treadmill path of daily duty, which, if it brings no ecstatic pleasure, leaves no remorse. To infancy, absolute regularity in habits of food, sleep, clothing and cleanliness cure many ills and lay the foundation of a useful and honored life. This is the task of the intelligent mother, and to no person less competent should it be delegated. Feed a child with healthful food, cooked in precisely the same way, at exactly recurring intervals; put it to sleep with faithful minuteness in regard to time; have its clothes uniformly protective and comfortable, not too cool, and not exhaustive from warmth; give it fresh air, either in well-ventilated rooms or outdoors every day; bathe it at night in tepid, in the morning in cold water, and the child will grow thriving and healthy and happy; But there must be no cessation by even so much as the failure to scald a cup or a saucepan in the routine; there must he no careless use sometimes of warm, sometimes of cold water, or, again, the omission of the bath altogether. The food must be prepared in the same way, with the same nicety of proportion, or evil results will, as they do, most surely follow. Only faithful intelligence can work itself out by such exact processes, though we all enjoy more than we think, being subjected to them. Everyone can understand how disagreeable it would be not to be able to make sure of one’s dinner; to be deprived of bed and sleep; to lose the enjoyment of abundance of good water, a daily bath and a daily paper; but upon the recurrence of how many more and much smaller minutta do we depend for onr daily comfort? We like certain kinds of bread at every meal, we want meat always cooked in certain favorite ways, and we expect to find it so as naturally as wo expect the sun to shine. We get used to seeing certain things in certain places, and we would not miss them upon any account. A tree, a bush, a picture or a chair which occupies the same place for years Acquiree a value to our consciousness which only the habit of seeing it can give it The world seems very large in growth and full of many and varied interests, but it contracts as we grow older and the objects of value to us narrow themselves down to those which we know to be real and which form our lives. Naturally, as these grow fewer in number they grow dearer, and the more we dislike to miss them from sight and sense. No fives are so happy as those that are so well ordered that there is little to resign, and to Vhich, therefore, every year brings added interest and added enjoyment in the regular discharge of individual and social duty.— N. Y,. Graphic. r Square-toed shoes will he popular again.