Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/327

 And more cheerful you'll feel Through the toil of the day; More refreshed you'll awake When the night's pass'd away."

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."