further description, but a few words define it. It is simply a well padded clothes-basket, and may be ornamented as much or as little as the fancy dictates. It serves as a snug nest for the little one, as deep in the folds of the soft blankets and dainty pads it is securely sheltered from any draft, and artificial warmth can be easily applied by hot water bottles at the sides and foot.

This basket should be its bed for months, or until it is outgrown. "But," mothers sometimes say to me, "it is so difficult to reach over and get the baby for feeding in the night;" and I respond, "A well trained baby will have no night feeding." Remember that more can be taught the little one in the first few weeks, than it can unlearn in the next few months without very diligent effort and patient persistence.

Should the little one make its advent in the night, it is more easily broken to good habits, than when it comes in the daytime. Why? Because it will sleep the remainder of the night and wake to be put to the breast some time during the day, and then again toward night, when it will be ready for another night of sleep. Of course this may seem a theoretical baby, and not at all real; and I will admit that some of these perverse little specimens

of humanity put to flight every theory that has been or can be made, while a few are models from the beginning.

If he does not like his surroundings, and refuses to be comforted, the night may have to be turned in to day for a short time, when gradually he must be gotten into line for sleeping at night, and having his wakeful time in the day. Fed at nine or ten at night, if he is properly adjusted, he will make no trouble until five or six in the morning. Should he nestle and fret, often a change in its position, a dry napkin, and a few drops of warm water, will send him off to sleep again for the remainder of the night.

That this can be done and the babies be heartier and stronger for it, I have proven with three of my very own, and many others under my care. That the mother will be stronger for having her night's sleep uninterrupted goes without saying. Should the baby be troublesome at first and so get into bad habits, the sooner it is broken of them and gotten into right ways the better for the mother and child.

However much the mother may enjoy it, it is better for the little one not to be rocked to sleep. Fed and placed in its bed, it will soon fall asleep, and wake when its nap is

over to lie there in content, should it not be time for another meal.

The answer to the question, how often shall the child be fed, is, that it depends upon the baby. The rule, however, is once in two hours the first two months, then lengthen the time by half an hour, each month thereafter, until it gets down to four meals a day, which will be needed until it is a year old. Should it be so unfortunate as to be a bottle-fed baby, then the quantity must be regulated as well. Beginning with two ounces, gradually increase until the limit of six ounces has been reached.

This is the rule, we have said, but not quite all babies submit kindly to the rule. You may be obliged to begin with a meal once in an hour and a half, but if so, you can soon regulate it to the proper time, and all will be well. In talking with Dr. Shipman, who was at the head of a large foundlings' home in Chicago, he said, "The first rule when a baby is brought in is to break it from night feeding, and we have little difficulty in doing this after the first two or three nights." The trouble too often is, the parents need breaking in, before they can patiently and persistently train a child in the right way. Their own habits are not fixed and method

ical, and they find it difficult to train their children into right ways of living and doing.

The nursery should be a sunny, pleasant room, large and cheerful, for here much of the time of the mother will be spent, whether she be able to keep a nurse to share with her the care of the little one or not. No true mother gives over the entire care of her children to a nurse, however efficient and kindly and cultured and wise the nurse she may have, may be; but she will keep the oversight and spend hours daily with her little ones, in their care and supervision and tender mothering, which no one else can give the child which is part of her very self. Mother should be to them the dearest being in the world, and no one should be allowed to come nearer them than she, in her loving sympathetic devotion and care.

Through all the months of pregnancy, the thoughts of motherhood have been taking root in her heart (we wish we might say in every case,"watered by joy and gladness," but not always is this so); sometimes the roots are set in bitterness, and the little soul growing to maturity under her heart, is absorbing the bitterness, to the sorrow and hurt of all its after life.

Of the first class Mrs. Burnett has given

us a lovely type. A mother is looking down into the face of her firstborn, and exclaims, "And this fair soul given to me from the outer bounds, we know not, and the little human body it wakened to life in; think you that Christ will help me to fold them in love, high and pure enough, and teach the human body to do honor to its soul? Surely that which He made in His own image, would not that it should despise itself and its own wonders, but do them reverence and rejoice in them nobly, honoring all their seasons and their changes. I pray for a great soul, and great wit, and great power to help this fair human thing to grow, and love and live." Is it any wonder that she should say of such a mother, "'Twas not mere love she gave her offspring. She gave them of her constant thought, and of honor such as taught them reverence of themselves as of all other human things. She was the noblest creature that they knew; her beauty, her great unswerving love, her truth, were things bearing to their child eyes the unchangingness of God's stars in heaven."

Again Mrs. Spofford in her incomparable little prose-poem, The Nemesis of Motherhood, pictures one of the other mothers, a vacuous, trifling woman, who utters the soul-cry, when