one girl learn all those hard things?"

Mrs. Wayne smiled indulgently as she replied, "O, she won't have to
learn all of them at once. Taken one at a time, through all the years
preceding her marriage, she will find she can learn something of each
without taxing herself too severely. For example, you can learn now how
to take care of your own health, and that will help you to care for the
health of your children when they come. You have already studied First
Aid to the injured in your physiology class. When you go to College you
will study psychology as a part of your course of study."

"What does that big word mean, mother?"

"Psychology means the science of mind. I said that mothers need to be
psychologists; that is, students of the science of mind, so that they
will understand the indications of the development of mind in their
babies. A child gets the largest part of its education before it is six
years old."

"O, mamma, do you really mean that?"

"I certainly do. In the first place, it has to learn, one by one, and by
repeated experiments, its body. You do not realize now that you had to
learn, one by one, and by repeated experiments, every one of the
muscular movements that you can now make without thinking of them. You
remember what hard work it was to learn the piano and that was only
learning to use a very few muscles in a certain way. As a baby you had
to practice hours a day before you could learn to hold anything in your
fingers. Your little hands flew about very wildly at first, but by
constant practice you gained skill at last."

"Why, mamma, I never thought that a baby was practicing when it was
throwing its hands about."

"But it is practicing, and it keeps it up hour after hour, day after
day, until it has learned to hold things, to pull itself up, to sit up,
to hold its head up, to creep, to walk, to climb.

"Have you any idea what a wonderful feat has been accomplished when a
baby has learned to walk? Physiologists tell us that walking is
continually beginning to fall and perpetual recovery from falling. It is
a greater thing for the baby than those acrobatic feats which so amazed
you the other day.

"Then the mental education begins also at birth. The baby is building
his brain by everything he sees and does, and it is the mother's duty to
see that this brain-building goes on in accordance with the law of his
nature. Every baby is a new being with a nature of his own, and what was
good for