It is a fact that tea and coffee are at first seldom or never agreeable
to children. It is the mixture of milk, sugar, and water, that
reconciles them to a taste, which in this manner gradually becomes
agreeable. Now suppose that those who provide for a family conclude
that it is not _their_ duty to give up entirely the use of stimulating
drinks, may not the case appear different in regard to teaching their
children to love such drinks? Let the matter be regarded thus: The
experiments of physiologists all prove that stimulants are not needful
to health, and that, as the general rule, they tend to debilitate the
constitution. Is it right, then, for a parent to tempt a child to drink
what is not needful, when there is a probability that it will prove, to
some extent, an undermining drain on the constitution? Some
constitutions can bear much less excitement than others; and in every
family of children, there is usually one or more of delicate
organization, and consequently peculiarly exposed to dangers from this
source. It is this child who ordinarily becomes the victim to
stimulating drinks. The tea and coffee which the parents and the
healthier children can use without immediate injury, gradually sap the
energies of the feebler child, who proves either an early victim or
a living martyr to all the sufferings that debilitated nerves inflict.
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