distributing their wares at every place where the train stops. Of course
nobody can well sit immediately in the opening of a window when the
thermometer is twelve degrees below zero; yet this, or suffocation in
foul air, is the only alternative. I generally prefer being half frozen
to death to the latter mode of martyrdom.

Attached to the Baltimore cars was a separate apartment for women. It
was of comfortable dimensions, and without a stove; and here I betook
myself with my children, escaping from the pestilential atmosphere of
the other compartment, and performing our journey with ease enough. My
only trial here was one which I have to encounter in whatever direction
I travel in America, and which, though apparently a trivial matter in
itself, has caused me infinite trouble, and no little compassion for the
rising generation of the United States--I allude to the ignorant and
fatal practice of the women of stuffing their children from morning till
night with every species of trash which comes to hand.... I once took
the liberty of asking a young woman who was traveling in the same
carriage with me, and stuffing her child incessantly with heavy cakes,
which she also attempted to make mine eat, her reason for this
system,--she replied, it was to "keep her baby good." I looked at her
own sallow cheeks and rickety teeth, and could not forbear suggesting to
her how much she was injuring her poor child's health. She stared in
astonishment, and pursued the process, no doubt wondering what I meant,
and how I could be so cruel as not to allow pound-cake to my child.
Indeed, as may easily be supposed, it becomes a matter of no little
difficulty to enforce my own rigid discipline in the midst of the
various offers of dainties which tempt my poor little girl at every
turn; but I persevere, nevertheless, and am not seldom rewarded by the
admiration which her appearance of health and strength excites wherever
she goes.

I remember being excessively amused at the woeful condition of an
unfortunate gentleman on board one of the Philadelphia boats, whose
sickly-looking wife, exhausted with her vain attempts to quiet three
sickly-looking children, had in despair given them into his charge. The
miserable man furnished each of them with a lump of cake, and during the
temporary lull caused by this diversion, took occasion to make
acquaintance with my child, to whom he tendered the same indulgence.
Upon my refusing it for her, he exclai