Yet I would not use so low a motive injudiciously, or reward a good action with a sugar-plum. Since childhood is or should be altogether made up of play and frolic, I see no reason why exercise purely physical should not have a material and tangible reward. If a young Majorcan, seeing a basket in the top of a tree, brings it down with a stone from his sling, why should he not have the recompense of a good breakfast, to repair the strength used in earning it? A young Spartan, braving the risk of a hundred lashes, stole into a kitchen, and carried off a live fox-cub, which concealed under his coat, scratched and bit him till the blood came. To avoid the disgrace of detection, the child allowed the creature to gnaw his entrails, and did not lift an eyelash or utter a cry.[23] Was it not just that, as a reward, he was allowed to devour the beast that had done its best to devour him? A good meal ought never to be given as a reward; but why should it not sometimes be the result of the pains taken to secure it? Émile will not consider the cake I put upon a stone as a reward for running well; he only knows that he cannot have the cake unless he reaches it before some other person does. This does not contradict the principle before laid down as to simplicity in diet. For to please a child's appetite we need not arouse it, but merely satisfy it; and this may be done with the most ordinary things in the world, if we do not take pains to refine his taste. His continual appetite, arising from his rapid growth, is an unfailing sauce, which supplies the place of many others. With a little fruit, or some of the dainties made from milk, or a bit of pastry rather more of a rarity than the every-day bread, and, more than all, with some tact in bestowing, you may lead an army of children to the world's end without giving them any taste for highly spiced food, or running any risk of cloying their palate. Besides, whatever kind of diet you give children, provided they are used only to simple and common articles of food, let them eat, run, and play as much as they please, and you may rest assured they will never eat too much, or be troubled with indigestion. But if you starve them half the time, and they can find a way to escape your vigilance, they will injure themselves with all their might, and eat until they are entirely surfeited. Unless we dictate to our appetite other rules than those of nature, it will never be inordinate. Always regulating, prescribing, adding, retrenching, we do everything with scales in hand. But the scales measure our own whims, and not our digestive organs. To return to my illustrations; among country folk the larder and the orchard are always open, and nobody, young or old, knows what indigestion means. Result. The Pupil at the Age of Ten or Twelve.