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The Child of the Dawn

The Child of the Dawn

Arthur Christopher Benson
5.0
Literature
35 Chapters
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Contents

A.C. Benson was a popular British essayist and poet in the late 19th century, and many of his works continue to be read today.

Chapter 1 WAKING UP

If there is anything that we all enjoy, it is waking up on a bright spring morning and seeing the sunlight pouring into the room. You all know the poem beginning,-

"I remember, I remember

The house where I was born;

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn."

You are feeling fresh and rested and happy after your good night's sleep and you are eager to be up and out among the birds and the flowers.

You are perfectly right in being glad to say "Good morning" to the sun, for he is one of the best friends you have. Doesn't he make the flowers blossom, and the trees grow? And he makes the apples redden, too, and the wheat-ears fill out, and the potatoes grow under the ground, and the peas and beans and melons and strawberries and raspberries above it. All these things that feed you and keep you healthy are grown by the heat of the sun. So if it were not for the sunlight we should all starve to death.

While sunlight is pouring down from the sun to the earth, it is warming and cleaning the air, burning up any poisonous gases, or germs, that may be in it. By heating the air, it starts it to rising. If you will watch, you can see the air shimmering and rising from an open field on a broiling summer day, or wavering and rushing upward from a hot stove or an open register in winter. Hold a little feather fluff or blow a puff of flour above a hot stove, and it will go sailing up toward the ceiling. As the heated air rises, the cooler air around rushes in to fill the place that it has left, and the outdoor "drafts" are made that we call winds.

These winds keep the air moving about in all directions constantly, like water in a boiling pot, and in this way keep it fresh and pure and clean. If it were not for this, the air would become foul and damp and stagnant, like the water in a ditch or marshy pool. So the Sun God, as our ancestors in the Far East used to call him thousands of years ago, not only gives us our food to eat, but keeps the air fit for us to breathe.

In still another way the sun is one of our best friends; for his rays have the wonderful power, not only of causing plants that supply us with food-the Green Plants, as we call them-to grow and flourish, but at the same time of withering and killing certain plants that do us harm. These plants-the Colorless Plants, we may call them-are the molds, the fungi, and the bacteria, or germs. You know how a pair of boots put away in a dark, damp closet, or left down in the cellar, will become covered all over with a coating of gray mold. Mold grows rapidly in the dark. Just so, these other Colorless Plants, which include most of our disease germs, grow and flourish in the dark, and are killed by sunlight. That is why no house, or room, is fit to live in, into which the sunlight does not pour freely sometime during the day. The more sunlight you can bring into your bedrooms and your playrooms and your schoolrooms, except during the heat of the day in the summer time, the better they will be. The Italians have a very shrewd and true old proverb about houses and light: "Where the sunlight never comes, the doctor often does."

So you see that Nature is guiding you in the right direction when she makes you love and delight in the bright, warm, golden sunlight; for it is one of the very best friends that you have-indeed, you couldn't possibly live without it.

In one sense, in fact, though this may be a little harder for you to understand, you are sunlight yourselves; for the power in your muscles and nerves that makes you able to jump and dance and sing and laugh and breathe is the sunlight which you have eaten in bread and apples and potatoes, and which the plants had drunk in through their leaves in the long, sunny days of spring and summer.

So throw up your blinds and open your windows wide to the sunlight every morning; and let the sunlight pour in all day long, except only while you are reading or studying-when the dazzling light may hurt your eyes-and for six or seven of the hottest hours of the day in summer time. Perhaps your mothers will object that the sunlight will fade the carpets, or spoil the furniture; but it will put far more color into your faces than it will take out of the carpets. If you are given the choice of a bedroom, choose a room that faces south or southeast or southwest, never toward the north.

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Latest Release: Chapter 35 The Land of Nod.   01-08 10:43
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1 Chapter 1 WAKING UP
04/12/2017
2 Chapter 2 A GOOD START
04/12/2017
3 Chapter 3 GETTING READY
04/12/2017
4 Chapter 4 AN EARLY ROMP
04/12/2017
5 Chapter 5 FRESH AIR—WHY WE NEED IT
04/12/2017
6 Chapter 6 BRINGING THE FRESH AIR IN
04/12/2017
7 Chapter 7 HEARING AND LISTENING
04/12/2017
8 Chapter 8 SEEING AND READING
04/12/2017
9 Chapter 9 A DRINK OF WATER
04/12/2017
10 Chapter 10 LITTLE COOKS
04/12/2017
11 Chapter 11 TASTING AND SMELLING
04/12/2017
12 Chapter 12 TALKING AND RECITING
04/12/2017
13 Chapter 13 KEEPING WELL
04/12/2017
14 Chapter 14 SOME FOES TO FIGHT
04/12/2017
15 Chapter 15 GROWING STRONG
04/12/2017
16 Chapter 16 ACCIDENTS
04/12/2017
17 Chapter 17 GETTING READY FOR BED
04/12/2017
18 Chapter 18 Waking Up.
04/12/2017
19 Chapter 19 A Good Start.
04/12/2017
20 Chapter 20 Getting Ready.
04/12/2017
21 Chapter 21 An Early Romp.
04/12/2017
22 Chapter 22 Fresh Air—Why We Need It.
04/12/2017
23 Chapter 23 Bringing the Fresh Air In.
04/12/2017
24 Chapter 24 Hearing and Listening.
04/12/2017
25 Chapter 25 Seeing and Reading.
04/12/2017
26 Chapter 26 A Drink of Water.
04/12/2017
27 Chapter 27 Little Cooks.
04/12/2017
28 Chapter 28 Tasting and Smelling.
04/12/2017
29 Chapter 29 Talking and Reciting.
04/12/2017
30 Chapter 30 Keeping Well.
04/12/2017
31 Chapter 31 Some Foes to Fight.
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32 Chapter 32 Growing Strong.
04/12/2017
33 Chapter 33 Accidents.
04/12/2017
34 Chapter 34 Getting Ready for Bed.
04/12/2017
35 Chapter 35 The Land of Nod.
04/12/2017
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