ir apprehensions.

It is more difficult to manage with those who have sluggish, than with
those who have timid, attention. Indolent children have not usually so
lively a taste for pleasure as others have; they do not seem to hear
or see so quickly; they are content with a little enjoyment; they have
scarcely any ambition; they seem to prefer ease to all sorts of glory;
they have little voluntary exertion; and the pain of attention is to
them so great, that they would preferably endure the pain of shame,
and of all the accumulated punishments which are commonly devised for
them by the vengeance of their exasperated tutors. Locke notices this
listless, lazy humour in children; he classes it under the head
"Sauntering;" and he divides saunterers into two species; those who
saunter only at their books and tasks; and those who saunter at play
and every thing. The book-saunterers have only an acute, the others
have a chronic disease; the one is easily cured, the other disease
will cost more time and pains.

If, by some unlucky management, a vivacious child acquires a dislike
to literary application, he may appear at his books with all the
stupid apathy of a dunce. In this state of literary dereliction, we
should not force books and tasks of any sort upon him; we should
rather watch him when he is eager at amusements of his own selection,
observe to what his attention turns, and cultivate his attention upon
that subject, whatever it may be. He may be led to think, and to
acquire knowledge upon a variety of subjects, without sitting down to
read; and thus he may form habits of attention and application, which
will be associated with pleasure. When he returns to books, he will
find that he understands a variety of things in them which before
appeared incomprehensible; they will "give him back the image of his
mind," and he will like them as he likes pictures.

As long as a child shows energy upon any occasion, there is hope. If
he "lend his little soul"[22] to whipping a top, there is no danger of
his being a dunce. When Alcibiades was a child, he was one day playing
at dice with other boys in the street; a loaded waggon came up just as
it was his turn to throw. At first he called to the driver to stop,
but the waggoner would not stop his horses; all the boys, except
Alcibiades, ran away, but Alcibiades threw himself upon his face,
directly before the horses, and stretching himself out, bid the
waggoner drive on if he pleased