"
And so they do. But the "better" is only a deceitful sham, kept up by
excited and overwrought nerves,--the same thing that we see over and over
and over again in all lives which are temporarily kindled and stimulated
by excitement of any kind.
This is the worst thing, this is the most fatal thing in all our
mismanagements and perversions of the physical life of our children. Their
beautiful elasticity and strength rebound instantly to an apparently
uninjured fulness; and so we go on, undermining, undermining at point
after point, until suddenly some day there comes a tragedy, a catastrophe,
for which we are as unprepared as if we had been working to avert, instead
of to hasten it. Who shall say when our boys die at eighteen, twenty,
twenty-two, our girls either in their girlhood or in the first strain of
their womanhood,--who shall say that they might not have passed safely
through the dangers, had no vital force been unnecessarily wasted in their
childhood, their infancy?
Every hour that a child sleeps is just so much investment of physical
capital for years to come.
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