hich are known as
"children's parties" are generally fruitful of ill results, at any
rate with nervous and highly-strung children. Sometimes they entail a
postponement of the usual bedtime, and nearly always they involve
over-heated and crowded rooms. Perverse custom has decreed that these
gatherings shall take place most commonly in the winter, when dark and
cold add nothing to the pleasure and a great deal to the risk of
infection which must always attend the crowding of susceptible
children together in a confined space with faulty ventilation. There
is clearly on the score of health much less objection to summer garden
parties for children, but these for some reason are less the vogue. As
a rule parties are not enjoyed by nervous children. There is intense
excitement in anticipation, and when at length the moment arrives,
there is apt to be disillusion. Either the excitement of the child may
pass all bounds and end in tears and so-called naughtiness, or the
unfamiliar surroundings may leave him distrait with a strange sense of
unreality and unhappiness. It is not always fair to blame the want of
wisdom in his hostess's choice of eatables, if the excited and
overstimulated child fails in the work of digestion and returns to the
nursery to suffer the reaction, with pains and much sickness.

The same arguments may be urged against taking little children to the
theatre. The nerve strain is apt to be out of proportion to the
enjoyment gained. If children must go to theatres and parties, the
treat should be kept secret from them until the moment of its
realisation, in order that the period of mental excitement should be
contracted as much as possible, and grown-up people should be advised
to treat the whole expedition in a matter-of-fact sort of way that
does nothing to add to the excitement or increase the risk of
subsequent disillusion.

CHAPTER VIII

NERVOUSNESS IN EARLY INFANCY

We may now pass back to consider the nervous system of the child in
infancy. There, too, from the moment of birth there are clearly-marked
differences between individuals. The newborn baby has a personality of
his own, and mothers will note with astonishment and delight how
strongly marked variations in conduct and behaviour may be from the
first. One baby is pleased and contented, another is fidgety,
restless, and enterprising. At birth the baby wakes from his long
sleep to find his environment completely changed. Within the uteru