The best bed is that in which we get the best sleep.  Emile and I will prepare such a bed for ourselves during the daytime.  We do not need Persian slaves to make our beds; when we are digging the soil we are turning our mattresses.  I know that a healthy child may be made to sleep or wake almost at will.  When the child is put to bed and his nurse grows weary of his chatter, she says to him, “Go to sleep.”  That is much like saying, “Get well,” when he is ill.  The right way is to let him get tired of himself.  Talk so much that he is compelled to hold his tongue, and he will soon be asleep.  Here is at least one use for sermons, and you may as well preach to him as rock his cradle; but if you use this narcotic at night, do not use it by day.

I shall sometimes rouse Emile, not so much to prevent his sleeping too much, as to accustom him to anything—­even to waking with a start.  Moreover, I should be unfit for my business if I could not make him wake himself, and get up, so to speak, at my will, without being called.

If he wakes too soon, I shall let him look forward to a tedious morning, so that he will count as gain any time he can give to sleep.  If he sleeps too late I shall show him some favourite toy when he wakes.  If I want him to wake at a given hour I shall say, “To-morrow at six I am going fishing,” or “I shall take a walk to such and such a place.  Would you like to come too?” He assents, and begs me to wake him.  I promise, or do not promise, as the case requires.  If he wakes too late, he finds me gone.  There is something amiss if he does not soon learn to wake himself.

Moreover, should it happen, though it rarely does, that a sluggish child desires to stagnate in idleness, you must not give way to this tendency, which might stupefy him entirely, but you must apply some stimulus to wake him.  You must understand that is no question of applying force, but of arousing some appetite which leads to action, and such an appetite, carefully selected on the lines laid down by nature, kills two birds with one stone.

If one has any sort of skill, I can think of nothing for which a taste, a very passion, cannot be aroused in children, and that without vanity, emulation, or jealousy.  Their keenness, their spirit of imitation, is enough of itself; above all, there is their natural liveliness, of which no teacher so far has contrived to take advantage.  In every game, when they are quite sure it is only play, they endure without complaint, or even with laughter, hardships which they would not submit to otherwise without floods of tears.  The sports of the young savage involve long fasting, blows, burns, and fatigue of every kind, a proof that even pain has a charm of its own, which may remove its bitterness.  It is not every master, however, who knows how to season this dish, nor can every scholar eat it without making faces.  However, I must take care or I shall be wandering off again after exceptions.