Now if, when the young person first arrives, he is taught his proper place in the economy of the household, we shall have none of this. Precious, perfect, and beautiful as no doubt he is, the world is full of others just exactly like him, and while we all of us, I hope, recognise and believe in the serious and solemn side of maternity, while we know and feel that here is an immortal soul committed to our charge to train in the best way possible--for time and for eternity too, if we can--I do maintain that the lives of the parents are to be considered too, and that Edwin and Angelina have no right to sink themselves and their identity in that terrible middle-class ‘pa’ and ‘ma’ which seems to swallow, like some all-devouring serpent, the prettinesses and good taste of so many of our young married people, and that causes more unhappiness, I venture to state, than almost anything else. The cry of an infant is soon interpreted by his nurse, who easily discriminates between hunger and temper, and the shrieks of temper must be stopped at once, or else our lives will be made a burden to us. How often have the untamed shrieks of children embittered my existence! and I am sure hundreds of people have suffered as I do. Now, unless something really has happened, I go so far as to say children can fall and hurt themselves without announcing the fact to the neighbours. I always make my own children try and exercise self-control, and the small troubles that are the fate of all cease to be the terror of the household when little ones bear them manfully, and have their wounds dressed without roaring all the time, and the wounds cease to be terrible to the children themselves, and pain becomes bearable, if the sufferer sees that there is nothing so serious after all, and that nothing terrible results from it; but this training must begin at the very beginning--it cannot begin too early. Children must learn that they can help their elders, who have so much an their shoulders already, and babies must be taught to be decent members of society, so will their coming be a pleasure, and not the torment and upsetting it all too often is in a household. With a first baby the danger of this is always immense, and Angelina requires almost superhuman courage to prevent it being otherwise. It is a temptation to her to give herself airs to her friends, and to snub her own and Edwin’s mothers, who, having brought up children, may be presumed to know something about the subject, and to make Edwin’s life a burden to him too; while some Edwins are worse than their wives, and insist on dragging the poor child out of its bed at all seasons of the day and night to exhibit it, being, of course, bitterly indignant when the infant resents such treatment, and becomes crabbed and puny and miserable in consequence.