Each day some new article was added to the infantine wardrobe or furniture, in anticipation of the arrival of the long-looked-for little guest. To-day, Mrs. Pilchers was despatched for the newly-invented “artificial mother” that the lady had seen advertised, and thought it best to be prepared with; to-morrow, the same accommodating dame was hurried off after a half-guinea bottle of the immortal Mrs. Johnson’s Soothing Syrup. Then Mr. Quinine would signalize himself as a “dear man,” by one day presenting his wife with a “sweet pretty” coral and bells, and another, sending her home a “love” of a baby-jumper. All the preliminary arrangements were on the most extensive scale; quarts of dill-water, pound packets of “soujie,” cashmere cloaks and hoods, india-rubber rings, wicker rattles, nursing-aprons, pap-warming nightlamps—each and every of the several puerperal properties had been got ready, even down to the white glove for the knocker, (indicative of a “little kid,”) together with the small five-shilling advertisement in the morning papers concerning “the lady of Fuseli Quinine, Esq.” Indeed, the entire _mise en scene_ of the forthcoming spectacle had been “got up,” as the theatrical managers say, “utterly regardless of expense.” Suddenly, however, it struck “the lady of Fuseli Quinine, Esq.,” that one thing was still wanting to complete her stock of infantine furniture. She had forgotten that time-honoured preserver of the peace of families—a nurse’s chair; and felt convinced that, without the aid of the popular soporific seat, her “tiddy ickle sing” would never close its eyes; for Mrs. Quinine, enlightened by the profound experiences of Pilchers, was assured that that kind of wabbly, waggly, bobby motion which is peculiar to steam-boats, and the horror of children of a larger growth, was the delight of all those of a tender age, as if the homuncule was specially pleased in having a taste of “the ups and downs” of life at the earliest possible period in its existence. And certainly Mesdames Pilchers and Quinine were fully borne out in their opinions by the prevailing pacific treatment adopted by mothers and nurses in general. The fashionable theory among those entrusted with the care of infants seems to be, that babies, like physic, “when taken should be well shaken;” and, accordingly, the early existence of the poor little things is made to consist of a series of agitations in every possible direction. In the arms they are bobbed up and down—in the rocking chair they are waggled backwards and forwards—in the cradle they wabble from side to side—on the knee they are joggled till they shake again, like lumps of _blanc-mange_—and if allowed to remain quiet for a few minutes in that position, they are continually thumped on the back, as if they had swallowed a fish bone in their pap.