Excerpt from On Education
Suppose, on the other hand, a child, the offspring of laborious and indigent parents; its birth is effected upon the straw, or upon sacking, without curtains; the wind blows hard through the casement; the mother lies down contented with her small-beer caudle, and on the third or fourth day she is up, and dandling the babe upon her knee, or dancing it in her arms. The mother of the other, meanwhile, is gradually recovering from the pains of labour, upon a couch of down; stops up every crevice of air, "lest the breeze of heaven should visit her too roughly." Dares not rise till she is sufficiently weakened by the forms of a fashionable lying-in, as it is, in this case, emphatically called; and, at last, after much effort and more ceremony, she ventures abroad, on some auspicious, sun-shiny day, under the fortification of cloaks, hoods, and handkerchiefs, just to take an airing, with the glasses other carriage drawn up, and then returns to her chamber, shivering at those gale which fan the face of the poor woman, who inhales them as the most natural restoratives of health and beauty. About the time that the rich child begins to know the delicacy of it"s condition, the poor one would find itself promising and hardy, and in some degree inured to the storms of life. Let them be at this period each five years old; the one has acquired a sensation of softness, the other a habit of hardiness. Suppose then, about this time, it were possible for them to change situations. The pennyless lad shall go into the warm villa, the rich stripling into the cold cottage; what would be the consequence? Exactly the same as if the two mothers Xi fathers were to exchange.
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