§ 2

Health.  I imagine the minds of children as easily turned, this or that way, as water itself; and though this be the principal part, and our main care should be about the inside, yet the clay cottage is not to be neglected. I shall therefore begin with the case, and consider first the health of the body, as that which perhaps you may rather expect, from that study I have been thought more peculiarly to have applied myself to; and that also, which will he soonest dispatched, as lying, if I guess not amiss, in a very little compass.

§ 3

How necessary health is to our business and happiness; and how requisite a strong constitution, able to endure hardships and fatigue, is to one that will make any figure in the world, is too obvious to need any proof.

§ 4

Tenderness.  The consideration I shall here have of health, shall be, not what a physician ought to do with a sick and crazy child; but what the parents without the help of physic should do for the preservation and improvements of an healthy, or at least not sickly constitution in their children. And this perhaps might be all dispatched in this sort rule, viz. That gentlemen should use their children as the honest farmers and substantial yeomen do theirs. But because the mothers possibly may think this a little too hard, and the fathers too short, I shall explain myself more particularly; only laying down this as a general and certain observation for the women to consider, viz. That most children's constitutions are either spoiled, or at least harmed by cockering and tenderness.

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