and a blanket, all of which could be done in five minutes. As
babies lie still most of the time the first six weeks, they need no
dressing. I think the nurse was a full hour bathing and dressing my
firstborn, who protested with a melancholy wail every blessed minute.

Ignorant myself of the initiative steps on the threshold of time, I
supposed this proceeding was approved by the best authorities. However,
I had been thinking, reading, observing, and had as little faith in the
popular theories in regard to babies as on any other subject. I saw
them, on all sides, ill half the time, pale and peevish, dying early,
having no joy in life. I heard parents complaining of weary days and
sleepless nights, while each child, in turn, ran the gauntlet of red
gum, jaundice, whooping cough, chicken-pox, mumps, measles, scarlet
fever, and fits. They all seemed to think these inflictions were a part
of the eternal plan--that Providence had a kind of Pandora's box, from
which he scattered these venerable diseases most liberally among those
whom he especially loved. Having gone through the ordeal of bearing a
child, I was determined, if possible, to keep him, so I read everything
I could find on the subject. But the literature on this subject was as
confusing and unsatisfactory as the longer and shorter catechisms and
the Thirty-nine Articles of our faith. I had recently visited our dear
friends, Theodore and Angelina Grimke-Weld, and they warned me against
books on this subject. They had been so misled by one author, who
assured them that the stomach of a child could only hold one
tablespoonful, that they nearly starved their firstborn to death. Though
the child dwindled, day by day, and, at the end of a month, looked like
a little old man, yet they still stood by the distinguished author.
Fortunately, they both went off, one day, and left the child with Sister
"Sarah," who thought she would make an experiment and see what a child's
stomach could hold, as she had grave doubts about the tablespoonful
theory. To her surprise the baby took a pint bottle full of milk, and
had the sweetest sleep thereon he had known in his earthly career. After
that he was permitted to take what he wanted, and "the author" was
informed of his libel on the infantile stomach.

So here, again, I was entirely afloat, launched on the seas of doubt
without chart or compass. The life and well-being of the race seemed to
hang on the slender thread of such tradition