The great things for young children are quiet and regularity, and these are insured by having good nurseries and a good nurse. The nurse chosen for a first baby should never be less than twenty-five. Your young nurses are the most fearful mistakes for young mothers; they do not understand handling or dressing a baby, and they send off for the doctor at every moment, when an older woman would have the sense to know what to do, thus spending on the physician what would have paid good wages over and over again. They think of nothing save their own pleasure and amusement, and have no real love either for the child, who wearies them, or for the mistress, who, tired of their incapacity, is continually scolding without making any real change in the conduct, that is bad because the girl lacks what can only be given her by age, and a much longer experience than she can ever possibly possess. A perfect nurse is often obtained from a friend’s nursery where she has lived for some time as second nurse in a good establishment. She should have some four or five years’ character, and when found should be clung to, until Angelina’s nursery is transformed into the ‘girls’’ sitting-room, when nurse has often become so precious she stays on and on until transferred to the nursery of the first girl who is married and requires her help. What a comfort such a woman is to all in the house no one save the happy mistress can ever know! She is delightful in sickness and trouble, ‘her’ children are her first thought, their trials and joys are hers, and she helps, as only a good nurse can, the overworked mother should any special trials come, that are made bearable only because some one else shares them too. But the perfect nurse presupposes the perfect nursery, and, as all young mothers should strive for the first at all events, so I do not see why I should not take it for granted that the baby is considered more than an occasional visitor, and describe at once how a nursery ought to be furnished and decorated, because I do not believe any child ought to be in the room in the day in which he _and his nurse_ have slept all night; nor that a child should sleep all night in a room where his nurse has had her meals all day, and where he has been most of the twelve waking hours; any more than I consider a child’s day nursery should be his mother’s sitting-room, where visitors come, and all sorts of irregularities are practised in the way of draughts, heat, light, &c., that should never be allowed. The day nursery should be as roomy a room as can be had, and the window should be able to be opened top and bottom; no blinds should be allowed, but the nice muslin and serge, or rather cretonne, curtains should be arranged here as elsewhere, to temper the light and make the room look cheerful and pretty.