a propensity to stammer, she will stop them, repeat the word or words slowly herself, and get them to do the same.  These precautions are amongst the most sacred of the duties of parents; for, remember, the deformity is for life; a thought which will fill every good parent’s heart with solicitude.  All swaddling and tight covering are mischievous.  They produce distortions of some sort or other.  To let children creep and roll about till they get upon their legs of themselves is a very good way.  I never saw a native American with crooked limbs or hump-back, and never heard any man say that he had seen one.  And the reason is, doubtless, the loose dress in which children, from the moment of their birth, are kept, the good food that they always have, and the sweet air that they breathe in consequence of the absence of all dread of poverty on the part of the parents.

281.  As to bodily exercise, they will, when they begin to get about, take, if you let them alone, just as much of it as nature bids them, and no more.  That is a pretty deal, indeed, if they be in health; and, it is your duty, now, to provide for their taking of that exercise, when they begin to be what are called boys and girls, in a way that shall tend to give them the greatest degree of pleasure, accompanied with the smallest risk of pain:  in other words, to make their lives as pleasant as you possibly can.  I have always admired the sentiment of ROUSSEAU upon this subject.  ’The boy dies, perhaps, at the age of ten or twelve.  Of what use, then, all the restraints, all the privations, all the pain, that you have inflicted upon him?  He falls, and leaves your mind to brood over the possibility of your having abridged a life so dear to you.’  I do not recollect the very words; but the passage made a deep impression upon my mind, just at the time, too, when I was about to become a father; and I was resolved never to bring upon myself remorse from such a cause; a resolution from which no importunities, coming from what quarter they might, ever induced me, in one single instance, or for one single moment, to depart.  I was resolved to forego all the means of making money, all the means of living in any thing like fashion, all the means of obtaining fame or distinction, to give up every thing, to become a common labourer, rather than make my children lead a life of restraint and rebuke; I could not be sure that my children would love me as they loved their own lives; but I was, at any rate, resolved to deserve such love at their hands; and, in possession of that, I felt that I could set calamity, of whatever description, at defiance.