257.  In the rearing of children, there is resolution wanting as well as tenderness.  That parent is not truly affectionate who wants the courage to do that which is sure to give the child temporary pain.  A great deal, in providing for the health and strength of children, depends upon their being duly and daily washed, when well, in cold water from head to foot.  Their cries testify to what a degree they dislike this.  They squall and kick and twist about at a fine rate; and many mothers, too many, neglect this, partly from reluctance to encounter the squalling, and partly, and much too often, from what I will not call idleness, but to which I cannot apply a milder term than neglect.  Well and duly performed, it is an hour’s good tight work; for, besides the bodily labour, which is not very slight when the child gets to be five or six months old, there is the singing to overpower the voice of the child.  The moment the stripping of the child used to begin, the singing used to begin, and the latter never ceased till the former had ceased.  After having heard this go on with all my children, ROUSSEAU taught me the philosophy of it.  I happened, by accident, to look into his EMILE, and there I found him saying, that the nurse subdued the voice of the child and made it quiet, by drowning its voice in hers, and thereby making it perceive that it could not be heard, and that to continue to cry was of no avail.  ‘Here, Nancy,’ said I (going to her with the book in my hand), ’you have been a great philosopher all your life, without either of us knowing it.’  A silent nurse is a poor soul.  It is a great disadvantage to the child, if the mother be of a very silent, placid, quiet turn.  The singing, the talking to, the tossing and rolling about, that mothers in general practise, are very beneficial to the children:  they give them exercise, awaken their attention, animate them, and rouse them to action.  It is very bad to have a child even carried about by a dull, inanimate, silent servant, who will never talk, sing or chirrup to it; who will but just carry it about, always kept in the same attitude, and seeing and hearing nothing to give it life and spirit.  It requires nothing but a dull creature like this, and the washing and dressing left to her, to give a child the rickets, and make it, instead of being a strong straight person, tup-shinned, bow-kneed, or hump-backed; besides other ailments not visible to the eye.  By-and-by, when the deformity begins to appear, the doctor is called in, but it is too late:  the mischief is done; and a few months of neglect are punished by a life of mortification and sorrow, not wholly unaccompanied with shame.