But all too often one is compelled to have the infant in one’s room because of the absurd way in which our houses are arranged, and I do wish architects and builders (to return to another old grievance, like the gas subject) would consult a jury of matrons, even if they will not consult their wives alone, before they set to work to give us any more houses, for really they are one and all ignorant of the commonest principles of their art as regarded from a purely feminine point of view. Why won’t they recollect that one or two rooms should lead out of each other? Why won’t they remember nurseries are wanted in most houses? and why will they not arrange their plans with a memory of some of the most common events of domestic life? If they did, the first floors of most habitations would be very different to what they are now, and domestic life would be much easier. I can only hope that the conscientious male, whose eye of course ceased to fall on this page when he read the warning words _For ladies only_, will take up the thread of my discourse where it ceased to be private, and will read, mark, and inwardly digest as much of this last paragraph of mine as he possibly can. Of course, one of the first things to be provided is a bed for the small infant, as from the very earliest dawn of its existence there is no doubt in my mind that it ought to be taught to sleep in its own cot, and that without any of the pernicious petting, patting, and putting to sleep that mothers and nurses are so fond of, and that brings about its own revenges in the forming speedily of a most unruly tyrant, who promptly makes their lives a burden to them, refusing to go to his slumbers without an attendant nymph. People fondly imagine that babies do not know in the least what their caretakers do until they are, at the smallest computation, three months old, and have begun, in nursery parlance, to ‘take notice.’ Now, let any one who has ever seen an infant taken by some one who is ignorant of its ways contrast the picture with that of this same baby taken by a ‘past mistress’ of the art, and they will at once understand what I mean when I declare solemnly that a child is never too small, too tiny, to feel and know whether it has to deal with some one who knows its ways, and means it to be brought up decently and properly, or with a well-meaning idiot, who allows herself to be conquered and enslaved by a long-clothes slobberer, who the more it is given in to the more it immediately exacts from its worshippers.