Homo-Culture; Or, The Improvement of Offspring Through Wiser GenerationHolbrook, M. L. (Martin Luther)
Philosophy
Homo-Culture; Or, The Improvement of Offspring Through Wiser Generation
Holbrook, M. L. (Martin Luther)
Eugenics; Heredity
Feeding began with a meal every hour of the twenty-four, for the first
week. Then night feeding was reduced to two meals, and he was fed every
two hours, from four or five o'clock in the morning till nine at night,
till two months old. About then he began sleeping right through the
nights; and until three months old was fed every three hours of the day
time; then for a month he went four hours between his meals. At his
fourth month began the present regime of four meals _per diem_. Now and
then he has cried in the night from thirst, and a few spoonsful of cold
water have sufficed to send him off to sleep again. All in all, I think
I could count on my fingers the times that he has wakened us out of
hours, and not once has anyone walked the floor with him. In fact, no
diversions of this sort have ever been practiced on him. He has never
been rocked to sleep; whenever cross or fretful in the day, we have
known that sleep was all he needed, and into his little bed he has been
promptly plumped, and covered with a loosely knit afghan, tented on a
light framework, which we call "the extinguisher." Here shut away and
entirely unnoticed he soon learned to give himself up to his own
reflections, and then presently to sleep. Thus we have kept down the
first great nuisance of ordinary infancy, namely, egoism and a habit of
howling for attention when no attention is really needed. But social
relations, and those of the gayest, he has constantly with both his
parents. We take up and make into play with him each idea of his own. We
have shown him some finger-plays. In the main we leave him to originate
his own amusements.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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