In each case there are years of troublesome treatment, all sorts of
unpleasant limitations, pain it may be, and certainly, at the best, a
variety of discomforts. The joy and little pleasures of youth are gone.
It makes one sorrowful to think of such cases, even when all that
competent means can do to help them is at their disposal, and still more
to reflect on those who have to battle for health with no more resource
than is left to the needy. What shall we not do for them! The woman's
whole tendency is to give them all of herself and all else that she can
control. Indulgence becomes inevitable, or seems to become so, and the
mother is rare who does not insist that they shall have what they
desire, and that her other children shall yield to them in all things.
Her answer to herself and others is, "They have so little; let them at
least have what they can." As rare as the reasonable mother is the sick
child who can stand this treatment and survive with those traits of
character which it above all others requires to make its crippled life
happy, not to say useful. The child thus unrestrained and foolishly
indulged must needs become ill-tempered. It loses self-control, and yet
no one will need it more. It learns to expect no disappointments, and
life is to hold for it less than for others. Disease has crippled its
body and the mother has crippled its character.

I have no belief that long illness is good for the mass of people, but
the character of the adult sufferer is in his or her own hands to make,
mar, or mend. In childhood the mother is in large measure responsible
for the ductile being in her care. If she believes that unrestraint is
her duty, she is laying up for the invalid a retribution which soon or
late will bitterly visit on the child the sin or, if you like, the
mistakes of the parent. It is her business and duty, no matter how hard
may be to her the trial, to see that this child, above all others, shall
be taught patience, gentleness, good temper, and self-control in all its