I could write pages both about the nursery cupboards and the sofa, but will mercifully refrain, because I have other things to say about the furnishing of the walls, and the emphatic necessity of a high guard for the fire fastened into the wall, so that it cannot be taken, as we took ours once, for the gratings before a lion in an imaginary ‘Zoo,’ also furnished by the sofa; while we have also to consider the night apartment, for naturally the perfect nursery of which I would like to think we were all possessed has its night apartment leading out of it. This should be painted and papered _en suite_ with the day room, and have very dark serge curtains to draw over the windows, so that all light may be excluded, thus enabling the sense of darkness and quiet to be obtained that is so very necessary for a small child. I do not think I have mentioned what I should like to impress very much on my readers, that on no account, _on no pretext whatever_, should that most pernicious gas be allowed in any nursery, either day or night. There is nothing more harmful for small lungs than the vitiated atmosphere caused by gas, nothing worse for small brains and eyes than the glitter and harsh glare of the gas, that a servant invariably turns up to its height, and very often drags down, regardless that an escape of gas is pouring out of the top of the outraged chandelier or bracket. There is no reason, either, why gas should be allowed; a good duplex lamp gives quite sufficient light to work by, and must be kept clean, or it will smell and also give out no light at all, and all danger is done away with if it be set well in the centre of the nursery table, which has, remember, no cloth to drag off suddenly, and which should stand square against the wall, or in a recess by the fire when not actually in use for nursery meals. Or a really strong, good bracket, painted the colour of the wall, just high enough to be out of the reach of little hands, might be provided on purpose for the lamp, and the nurse could either have a wicker-work table provided for her, or could put her wicker-work covered basket on a chair by her side, and sit close under her lamp to work; or it might even stand on the mantelpiece on a broad shelf, where also it would be equally well out of the little folks’ way. You have nothing to do, as I said in one of my former chapters, but to notice the effect gas has on plants, and then notice how these same plants live on and flourish without gas, to understand that my theory about the unhealthiness of gas is a right one; and I think all will agree with me in saying that directly one is ill one recognises for oneself how disturbing gas is, and the first demand of a restless invalid is to have the gas put out, and a candle given instead. I shall never forget one case of illness I once had the unpleasantness of seeing. The wife, who had constituted herself nurse, and who knew about as much of nursing as