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, and yet almost invariably I find that in the cases referred to me
some physician has, with too little thought, recommended entire
abandonment or avoidance of mental training. I have neither space nor
desire to go into my reasons for a different belief. I am, however, sure
that education limited as to time, education of mind, and especially of
the hands, has for these cases distinct utility, while to them also, as
to the other children crippled in mind or body, all that I have already
urged applies with equal force.

As to the management of sick or crippled childhood, I have said far more
than I had at first meant to say, and chiefly because I have been made
to feel, as I thought the matter over, how far more difficult it is in
practice than in theory. But this applies to all moral lessons, and the
moralist must be credited by the thoughtful mother with a full
perception of the embarrassments which lie in her path.