to every
mother is, above all other arts and sciences, study first what relates
to babyhood, as there is no department of human action in which there is
such lamentable ignorance.

At the end of six weeks my nurse departed, and I had a good woman in her
place who obeyed my orders, and now a new difficulty arose from an
unexpected quarter. My father and husband took it into their heads that
the child slept too much. If not awake when they wished to look at him
or to show him to their friends, they would pull him out of his crib on
all occasions. When I found neither of them was amenable to reason on
this point, I locked the door, and no amount of eloquent pleading ever
gained them admittance during the time I considered sacred to the baby's
slumbers. At six months having, as yet, had none of the diseases
supposed to be inevitable, the boy weighed thirty pounds. Then the
stately Peter came again into requisition, and in his strong arms the
child spent many of his waking hours. Peter, with a long, elephantine
gait, slowly wandered over the town, lingering especially in the busy
marts of trade. Peter's curiosity had strengthened with years, and,
wherever a crowd gathered round a monkey and hand organ, a vender's
wagon, an auction stand, or the post office at mail time, there stood
Peter, black as coal, with "the beautiful boy in white," the most
conspicuous figure in the crowd. As I told Peter never to let children
kiss the baby, for fear of some disease, he kept him well aloft,
allowing no affectionate manifestations except toward himself.

My reading, at this time, centered on hygiene. I came to the
conclusion, after much thought and observation, that children never
cried unless they were uncomfortable. A professor at Union College, who
used to combat many of my theories, said he gave one of his children a
sound spanking at six weeks, and it never disturbed him a night
afterward. Another Solomon told me that a very weak preparation of opium
would keep a child always quiet and take it through the dangerous period
of teething without a ripple on the surface of domestic life. As
children cannot tell what ails them, and suffer from many things of
which parents are ignorant, the crying of the child should arouse them
to an intelligent examination. To spank it for crying is to silence the
watchman on the tower through fear, to give soothing syrup is to drug
the watchman while the evils go on. Parents may thereby insure eight