176. Supposing it to be winter, and the weather to be very cold, would you still send a child out?
Decidedly, provided he be well wrapped up. The cold will brace and strengthen him. Cold weather is the finest tonic in the world.
In frosty weather, the roads being slippery, when you send him out to walk, put a pair of large, old woolen stockings over his boots or shoes. This will not only keep his feet and his legs warm, but it will prevent him from falling down and hurting himself. While thus equipped, he may even walk on a slide of ice without falling down.
A child, in the winter time, requires, to keep him warm, plenty of flannel and plenty of food, plenty of fresh and genuine milk, and plenty of water in his tub to wash him in a morning, plenty of exercise and plenty of play, and then he may brave the frosty air. It is the coddled, the half-washed, and the half-starved child (half-washed and half-starved from either the mother’s ignorance or from the mother’s timidity), that is the chilly starveling,—catching cold at every breath of wind, and every time he either walks or is carried out,—a puny, skinny, scraggy, scare-crow, more dead than alive, and more fit for his grave than for the rough world he will have to struggle in!
AMUSEMENTS.
177. Have you any remarks to make on the amusements of a child?
Let the amusements of a child be as much as possible out of doors; let him spend the greater part of every day in the open air; let him exert himself as much as he pleases, his feelings will tell him when to rest and when to begin again; let him be what Nature intended him to be—a happy, laughing, joyous child. Do not let him be always poring over books.
“Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife,
Come, hear the woodland linnet!
How sweet his music! On my life