The basket should contain a complete set of baby’s things ready aired, and furthermore a skein of whitey-brown thread, a _new_ pair of scissors, a pot of cold cream, pins, safety pins, and some old pieces of linen; and the young mother will do wisely if she has the long pieces of Russian diaper used as hand-towels for some three or four months before taking them for the baby, as this softens them and makes them much better for the nurse’s use. All these things should be in readiness quite two months before they are required, and should be placed, with a large mackintosh sheet, two old blankets, and three coarse ‘blanket-sheets,’ where, should they be required in a hurry, they can be found at once. Attention to these particulars and directions saves fuss and worry and often prevents danger. These matters seen to, the young wife may now turn her mind to the arrangement of her own chamber, which she should do her very best to make as pretty as she can; or she should carefully look at the rooms at her disposal and see which will be the nicest and most cheerful for her to occupy; for there is really no need, unless we like, for the event to take place in the room usually occupied, and, if preferred, a pretty room might be got ready beforehand; but, if this be impossible, at least all the washing and toilet apparatus might depart, and some tables and low pretty chairs and a sofa, books and plants, replace the washing-stand and toilet-table, that can be relegated to another room until Angelina is herself again. Taking into consideration that, as an enterprising advertiser remarks, one half one’s time is spent in one’s bedroom, we cannot possibly take too much care about them to have them nice and pretty; for I am convinced one comes down to one‘s day’s work far better tempered from a pretty and convenient room, than one does from an ugly, inconvenient place, where we have worn ourselves out in hunting for our properties, or been worried by contemplating hideous papers and draperies, and ugly conventional walls without pictures or decoration of any kind; while if one has to be ill, and, what is more, has to contemplate a long period of convalescence in one spot, one cannot too carefully select one’s surroundings, for there is no doubt that one’s mind acts insensibly on one’s body, and that one’s convalescence is a great deal more advanced or retarded, as the case may be, than we think for by our surroundings; therefore, I am sure we shall not be wasting our time if we think a good deal about the arrangement of a room where the young mother will have to spend at least three weeks, and where she will remain a much more willing prisoner, if she is not harassed and worried by a bedroom where she cannot have any of her usual surroundings, and where the bedroom aspect of the chamber predominates over everything else, so preventing any visitors to her, save of the most intimate and personal kind possible. I do hope that the