Now when children have reached the age when they spend most of the day at school, there is no reason, on the ground of age, in the writer's opinion, against them having a sub stantial evening meal ; no reason, that is to say, why dinner should not be transferred to six, half-past six, or even, if there is reason for it, seven o'clock. The probability is that, in most families, such an arrangement would permit of the parents, and any older members of the family who may have passed out of school, sitting all down together.
In such circumstances the children's meals would be—breakfast, from 8 to 8.30 a.m.; a light lunch, from 12 noon to 1 p.m.; a second light meal, about 4 p.m.; and dinner, from 6.30 to 7 p.m.
Breakfast would consist of porridge and milk, which is a perfectly substantial and nourishing meal without any addition, or bread and milk, or bread and butter and milk, with the addi tion of an egg or a little fish.
The Mid-day Meal would consist of soup made with plenty of vegetables with toast, or broth with toast, or milk (hot in winter, cold in summer) with bread and butter. An apple or orange could not be objected to, pear or banana.
The Afternoon Meal might be a tumbler of milk and half a slice of bread and butter, or a plain bun, or cookie, or home-baked scone, or a couple of biscuits, or plain sponge-cake.
Dinner would also be a simple meal, con sisting of, at the most, a little fish or fowl, or meat with potato and one other vegetable, and a little stewed or preserved fruit. But it is an arrangement equally applicable to the simpler chop and potato, or the even humbler potato and herring.
The question at issue between a mid-day and an evening meal is not the number of cpurses or the quality of cooking, it is the suitability of the hour in relation to work or play; and that the chief meal of the day should be snatched and bolted, whether by adults or chil dren, iu a few minutes stolen from the midst V effort, whether physical or intellectual, mus cular or mental, is ridiculous in the extreme.
The arrangement suggested permits of one thoroughly nutritious meal at the commence ment of the day, when the digestive organs are fresh, and another when the main work of the day is over, and there is leisure both to enjoy and to digest it, while the smaller meals between are sufficient to maintain the nourish ment of the bodily machine while it is hard at work, without withdrawing for digestive purposes energy needed in the muscles or the brain.