Again, in elementary teaching upon the management of infants stress is laid, rightly enough, upon the importance of regularity in the times of feeding, and on the observance in this respect also of a very strict routine. But in the case of the very nervous infant a certain latitude should be allowed to an experienced nurse or mother. We may wreck everything by a blind adhesion to a too rigid scheme, which may demand that we leave the child to scream for an hour before his meal, or that, when at length he has fallen into a sound sleep after hours of wakefulness, we should proceed to wake him. Symptoms of dyspepsia which are due to continued nervous excitement demand treatment which is very different from that which would be appropriate to dyspepsia which is due to other causes, such as overfeeding or unsuitable feeding. The temporary restriction of food, which is commonly ordered in dyspepsia from these causes, is very badly supported by the nervous infant. Hunger invariably increases the unrest, and the unrest increases the dyspepsia. The difficulties of managing a nervous infant are very real, and call for the most exemplary patience on the part of the mother and the clearest insight into the nature of the disturbance. CHAPTER IX MANAGEMENT IN LATER CHILDHOOD In the early days in the nursery the actions of the infant, for the most part, follow passively the traction exercised by nurses and mothers, sometimes consciously, but more often unconsciously. We have now to consider a period when the child becomes possessed of a driving force of his own, and moves in this direction or that of his own volition. In this new intellectual movement through life he will not avoid tumbles. He will feel the restraints of his environment pressing upon him on all sides, and he will often come violently in contact with rigid rules and conventions to which he must learn to yield. From time to time we read in the papers of some terrible accident in a picture-palace, or in a theatre. Although there has been no fire, there has been a cry of fire, and in the panic which ensues lives are lost from the crowding and crushing. Yet all the time the doors have stood wide open, and through them an orderly exit might have been conducted had reason not given place to unreason. It is the task of those responsible for the children's education to guide them without wild struggling along the paths of well-regulated conduct towards the desired goal, influenced not by the emotions of the moment, but only by reason and a sense of right; not ignorant of the difficulties to be met, but practised and equipped to overcome them.