402 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



children of eight, nine, and ten years of age, and, 

 it may be, younger children still, are made to 

 study from nine o'clock until noon, and again, 

 after a hasty meal and an hour for play, from two 

 to five in the afternoon, aud later on are obliged 

 to go to lessons once more preparatory for the 

 following day. 



The bad fact is, that the work is actually done, 

 and as the brain is very active because it is di- 

 verted from its natural course, the child it belongs 

 to is rendered so unusually precocious that it 

 may become a veritable wonder. Worse than all, 

 this precocity and wonderful cleverness too often 

 encourage both parents and teachers to press the 

 little ability to some further stretch of ability, so 

 that the small wonder becomes an actual exhibi- 

 tion, a receptacle of knowledge that can turn up 

 a date like the chronological table of the " En- 

 cyclopajdia Britannica," give the whole history of 

 Cleopatra, to say nothing of the Needle, carry you 

 through a Greek verb without a stop, and prob- 

 ably recite a dozen selections from the best poets. 



This is the outside of the marvelous picture. 

 Let us look at the inside of it, as a skilled eye 

 can easily look and read too. These precocious 

 coached-up children are never well. Their men- 

 tal excitement keeps up a flush, which, like the 

 excitement caused by strong drink in older chil- 

 dren, looks like health, but has no relation to it. 

 If you look at the tongues of these children, you 

 see them to be furred or covered with many red 

 points like a strawberry, or to be too red and 

 very dry. If you inquire into the state of the 

 appetite, you find that the appetite is capricious ; 

 that all kinds of strange foods are asked for, and 

 that the stomach never seems to be in order. If 

 you watch the face for long, you note that the 

 frequent flush gives way to an unearthly paleness. 

 If you watch the eyes, you observe that they 

 gleam with light at one time and are dull, de- 

 pressed, and sad at another, while they never are 

 laughing eyes. Their brightness is the brightness 

 of thought on the strain, an evanescent and dan- 

 gerous phenomenon. If you feel the muscles, 

 they are thin and flabby, though in some instances 

 they may be fairly covered with fat. If you in- 

 quire as to the sleep these children get, you hear 

 that it is disturbed, restless, and sometimes broken. 

 In a healthy child the sleep comes on irresistibly 

 at an early hour, and, when the eyes are shut and 

 the body composed, the sleep is carried out till 

 waking-time without a movement of position of 

 the body. You ask the healthy child about his 

 sleep, and he says that he is simply conscious of 

 having closed his eyes and opened them again. 



But these unhealthy, over-taught children have 

 no such elysiura. They sleep, perchance to 

 dream ; to dream during half the night, and to 

 be assailed with all the pressures and labors of 

 dreams ; passing through strange abodes and nar- 

 row crevices which it seems impossible to squeeze 

 into ; and waking in a start, with the body cold, 

 in what is commonly called a nightmare, and 

 sometimes in somnambulism, or sleep-walking. 

 The bad sleep naturally leads to a certain over- 

 wakeful languor the next day; but, strangely 

 enough, it interferes with the natural advent of 

 sleep the next night, so that sleeplessness at 

 night becomes a habit. The child must be read 

 to sleep, or told stories until it is off, and thus it 

 falls into slumber fed with the food of dreams, 

 worries, cares, and wonders. 



In this period of early education, first state 

 of what may be fairly called the intemperance of 

 education, the recreations that are adopted for 

 the little scholar are often as pernicious as any 

 other part of the system in which he or she is 

 trained. During the day-pastimes, a want of 

 freshness and freedom prevails, almost of neces- 

 sity, in large towns ; and this want is often made 

 worse than it need to be by inattention or defi- 

 ciency of knowledge. 



In a town like London there are three classes 

 of children, all of whom present different aspects 

 of health. 



The children of the poorer people, the chil- 

 dren that play in the open streets and round the 

 squares, are constantly found to present the best 

 specimens of health in the whole child community. 

 If these children are well fed at home, and have 

 moderately comfortable beds, and are not put to 

 work for hours too long, they are singularly 

 healthy in many instances, even though they be 

 the denizens of courts, mews, and alleys. It is 

 true that numbers of them inherit sad constitu- 

 tional diseases ; it is true that numbers of them 

 exhibit deformities of the skeleton, owing to the 

 circumstance that during their infancy they 

 were not properly fed with food that will yield 

 bone-forming structure ; still, among them are 

 the ruddiest and healthiest of the town commu- 

 nities. They owe their health to the free and 

 out-door life. 



There is next a class of children belonging to 

 the well-to-do. These are taken out for walks in 

 the public parks and gardens, or are driven out, 

 and if they be permitted really to enjoy the out- 

 ing, and are not harassed with long lessons at 

 home or at school, they are bright and healthy, 

 though it is rare for them to present all the natu-- 



