and be able to
put in practice better than I can here state what I might more fully
say.

I do not wish, however, to be understood as urging that all children
long ill or crippled grow to be unamiable and spoiled. I do not quite
know why it is, but, after all, children are less apt to suffer morally
from long illness than adults, and very often, despite careless or
thoughtless usage, these young sufferers come out as wholesome in mind
and heart as if they had known no trial, or, perhaps, because of it. It
is in a measure a matter of original temperament. In other words, what
the sick child was as to character modified results, and this is
especially true as concerns the peculiarities which attract unpleasant
notice. One person who has twitching of the muscles of the face is made
miserable by the attention it invites; another is indifferent.

The cases of Lord Byron and Walter Scott are to the point. The former
was sensitive and morbid about his deformity. I cannot help thinking
that had his mother been other than she was, he would have been brought
up to more wholesome views as to what was after all no very great
calamity. Walter Scott suffered from a like trouble, but healthy moral
surroundings and a cheerful nature saved him from the consequences which
fell so heavily upon his brother poet.

Epilepsy is a malady but too common in childhood, and as to which a few
words apart are needed. Usually a child epileptic for some years will
carry the disease with it for a time, the length of which no man can
set. The disease may be such as to ruin mind and body, or the attacks
may be rare, and not prevent courageous and resolute natures from
leading useful lives. All intermediate degrees are possible. As a rule,
no children need so inflexible a discipline as epileptics. Indulgence as
regards them is only another name for ruin. Do as we may, they are apt
to become morally perverted, and require the utmost firmness, and the
most matured and educated intelligence, to train them wisely. Difficult
epileptics and most idiots are best looked after, and certainly
happiest, in some one of the competent training-schools for
feeble-minded children.

Even the milder epileptic cases are hard to manage. I rarely see one
which has been intelligently dealt with. Few mothers are able or willing
to use a rule as stern, as enduring, as unyielding as they require.

As to education, I am satisfied that these children are the better for
it, a