Plants and flowers ought not to be allowed to remain in a chamber at night. Experiments have proved that plants and flowers take up, in the daytime, carbonic acid gas (the refuse of respiration), and give off oxygen (a gas so necessary and beneficial to health), but give out in the night season a poisonous exhalation. Early rising cannot be too strongly insisted upon; nothing is more conducive to health, and thus to long life. A youth is frequently allowed to spend the early part of the morning in bed, breathing the impure atmosphere of a bed-room, when he should be up and about, inhaling the balmy and health-giving breezes of the morning: “Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed: The breath of night’s destructive to the hue Of ev’ry flower that blows. Go to the field, And ask the humble daisy why it sleeps Soon as the sun departs? Why close the eyes Of blossoms infinite, long ere the moon Her oriental veil puts off? Think why, Nor let the sweetest blossom Nature boasts Be thus exposed to night’s unkindly damp. Well may it droop, and all its freshness lose, Compell’d to taste the rank and pois’nous steam Of midnight theater and morning ball. Give to repose the solemn hour she claims; And from the forehead of the morning steal The sweet occasion. Oh! there is a charm Which morning has, that gives the brow of age A smack of youth, and makes the lip of youth Shed perfume exquisite. Expect it not, Ye who till noon upon a down-bed lie, Indulging feverish sleep.” If early rising be commenced in childhood it becomes a habit, and will then probably be continued through life. A boy ought on no account to be roused from his sleep; but as soon as he be awake in the morning, he should be encouraged to rise. Dozing—that state between sleeping and waking—is injurious; it enervates both body and mind, and is as detrimental to health as dram-drinking! But if he rise early, he must go to bed betimes; it is a bad practice to keep him up until the family retire to rest. He ought, winter and summer, to seek his pillow by nine o’clock, and should rise as soon as he awakes in the morning. Let me urge upon a parent the great importance of _not_ allowing the chimney of any bed-room, or of any room in the house, to be stopped, as many are in the habit of doing, to prevent, as _they_ call it, a draught, but to prevent, as _I_ should call it, health. 349. _How many hours of sleep ought a boy to have?_