PART I--A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT.
6. CHAPTER VI.
(continued)
The nurseries for males of noble or eminent birth, are provided
with grave and learned professors, and their several deputies. The
clothes and food of the children are plain and simple. They are
bred up in the principles of honour, justice, courage, modesty,
clemency, religion, and love of their country; they are always
employed in some business, except in the times of eating and
sleeping, which are very short, and two hours for diversions
consisting of bodily exercises. They are dressed by men till four
years of age, and then are obliged to dress themselves, although
their quality be ever so great; and the women attendant, who are
aged proportionably to ours at fifty, perform only the most menial
offices. They are never suffered to converse with servants, but go
together in smaller or greater numbers to take their diversions,
and always in the presence of a professor, or one of his deputies;
whereby they avoid those early bad impressions of folly and vice,
to which our children are subject. Their parents are suffered to
see them only twice a year; the visit is to last but an hour; they
are allowed to kiss the child at meeting and parting; but a
professor, who always stands by on those occasions, will not suffer
them to whisper, or use any fondling expressions, or bring any
presents of toys, sweetmeats, and the like.
The pension from each family for the education and entertainment of
a child, upon failure of due payment, is levied by the emperor's
officers.
The nurseries for children of ordinary gentlemen, merchants,
traders, and handicrafts, are managed proportionably after the same
manner; only those designed for trades are put out apprentices at
eleven years old, whereas those of persons of quality continue in
their exercises till fifteen, which answers to twenty-one with us:
but the confinement is gradually lessened for the last three years.
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