"Here are our new blue silk pajamas." Ardath said as she walked to Grandfather in his Study and placed them on his lap. Arthur did the same with his pajamas, but he placed them on Grandfather's lap as though he were glad to be rid of them.
"Tell us, now, when we may wear them." Ardath urged. Like all little girls, Ardath liked pretty, new clothing to wear.
"Every morning instead of dressing, before you come out to the lawn for your dew bath, you put on your blue silk pajamas." Grandfather answered abruptly and completely. "Your day clothing will be kept dry and fresh. But, they have another purpose, too.
It was easy for the children to understand that the special pajamas would keep them from rumpling their day clothing during the exercise on the lawn in the early morning. Arthur could not understand why it was not as well to keep on the pajamas he had slept in.
"Why must they be blue pajamas?" he asked.
"The sun has been shining each time we took a dew bath. So we have not only been getting magnetism from the earth, but electricity from the sun." Grandfather told the children, although only Arthur had asked a question.
"The finer rays of the sun, those that benefit us most, cannot get through ordinary clothing, but they can get through blue silk." Grandfather unfolded the top of Ardath's pajamas as he talked. "These little threads that the silk worms spun, are like little tubes. The sun pores right through them, to your skin."
"Why do we need sun on our skin?" Ardath wanted to know.
Instead of answering Ardath, directly, Grandfather asked another question, as he so often did. "What is a vitamin?"
"We take them, sometimes." Ardath answered, but Grandfather said that was not an answer, but a statement.
For a change, Arthur had nothing to say. He may not have been interested in vitamins, but more likely, he was a very sleepy little boy. He went to Grandfather's chair and put his head on the shoulder of his understanding great-grandfather.
Grandfather put the blue pajamas on the hassock and took Arthur on his lap. The little boy put his head on Grandfather's breast and went to sleep almost at once.
Grandfather answered the question he had asked Ardath. "A vitamin is a special something in food, without which we cannot be entirely healthy. When it was first discovered that people would be ill if they did not have this special something in food, it was called, a spiritual quality'."
"Is vitamin "C" a spiritual quality'?", Ardath asked.
"It is indeed." Grandfather was glad Ardath was interested enough in vitamins to ask questions. "We talked about vitamin "C" in rose hips, remember, when we were picking off the wilted roses."
"Now, we must get back to the importance of the blue silk. The sun rays go right through it, to the skin and produces vitamin D'. As we said, the beneficial rays cannot get through your play clothing. In order for the vitamin forming rays of the sun to be helpful we wear the blue silk."
Grandfather had written a book entitled, NATURE'S HEALTHFUL AGENTS which told all about the beneficial rays of the sun and vitamins. Many thousands of persons had read it and been helped by it. The children's parents followed the guidance of the book. It was on of the reasons Grandfather had been referred to as "very, very wise."
Ardath was health conscious. That means she was glad to know abut things that were good for her health. To show when was glad Grandfather told her about the blue silk and had a pair of pajamas made for her from it, when took her pajamas from the hassock where Grandfather had put them and rubbed them affectionately against her cheek.
"We better get this boy to bed", Grandfather decided.
He carried Arthur up the stairs. Ardath put the covers back on his bed so Grandfather could lay him down without disturbing him. Grandfather brushed back the hair from his forehead and planted a kiss in the middle of it.
Grandfather talked to Ardath awhile, then they said prayers and repeated together, "We grow like what we think of, so let us think of the good, the true and the beautiful."
"What did you see that was beautiful, today, Ardath?" Grandfather questioned.
"The sun, big trees, roses and other flowers, birds, flowing water", Ardath hesitated as though deciding, then added, "rain."
"I'm glad you included the rain." Grandfather said. "On everybody's garden a little rain must fall or life's fairest, sweetest flowers wouldn't grow and bloom at all."
Ardath went to sleep thinking of all the beautiful things
she could think of so she did not quite know when Grandfather
left her alone with her beautiful thought-pictures.
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