We have long ceased to regard either the souls or the brains of our children as strictly new and original compositions, as clean white paper over which we and time can write exactly what we wish; for science has taught us all about ‘heredity,’ and convinced us that we are all of us bundles of odds and ends, or scraps of this grandparent, with curious ‘sports’ of that uncle or aunt suddenly cropping up; and so, if we remember tendencies to consumption, or fevers, or gout, or, in fact, anything that we or our forefathers have shown a tendency for, we shall be able to manage our children much better than we otherwise should; for those children who are constantly ‘catching’ things, or meeting with accidents because of the brittleness of bone, or careless heedlessness inherited from some ancestor, must be more carefully watched and looked after than those who, coming of a healthy, splendidly constituted stock, are rarely ill, and only require water, air, and a pure, good diet to grow up splendid specimens of humanity, enjoying their lives thoroughly, and fully appreciating every day they live. Heredity is a great, a most important fact; and if only this could be taught in schools, if young men and women would recognise the wickedness of cousins marrying, and of passing on sickly or vicious tendencies to their children, we should look forward more and more hopefully to a future, when health should be demonstrated as the best possession a man can have--the best inheritance he can demand of his parents; for health means happiness and beauty and pleasure, and without health we cannot be either happy, good-tempered, or prosperous, or succeed in a world where life is one constant procession of beauty and surpassing interest, to those whose hearts are in the right place, and whose pure, wholesome blood courses vigorously through the veins and arteries of the whole body. CHAPTER XVII. THE SCHOOLROOM. In the selection of the schoolroom there are several things to be thought of; but if the nursery be done away with, and there should be no upstairs sitting-room, I strongly advise the schoolroom being on the bedroom floor. This is often a most useful institution, for sometimes it serves as a refuge to invalids who are well enough to leave their bedrooms, but not well enough to run the risks of draught on the stairs, while the children are out of the way of visitors, and are not always running up and down the passages in a distracting and untidy manner. Let me urge on all mothers of families to cling to either a day nursery or a schoolroom until the children are really too old to be glad of some place where they can do actually and positively as they like; that is to say, of course, unless they like to behave like savages, but this rarely happens in a household where the little ones have been accustomed to nice surroundings, and to be treated like human beings from their cradles.