‘This is the tank that drowned the cat, that clawed the pup, that eat up the strap the woman used, all worn with care, who was wife to the man that toiled all day to fill the mouths of seven hungry children that didn’t get enough.’ This melancholy record of the fortunes of the nineteenth-century representative peasant, was doubtless a variation of the legend of the old woman that lived in a shoe. Nevertheless it amused the little tots of twenty-first century time. For the extraordinary picture of seven little children inhabiting one poor little cottage appeared utterly absurd to their advanced minds, which could scarcely comprehend the folly of a poor man possessing more mouths to fill than was possible. ‘What did he want with all those?’ they innocently inquired. But their nurse could only reply—‘She didn’t quite know: it was a way they had in nineteenth-century times.’ The laws of health were so strictly taught in all schools that no individual could possibly grow up ignorant on those points; and every man, mostly, knew how to take charge of his own body. Nevertheless professors of medicine still flourished on the face of the earth; but the masculine sex had for generations past lost the monopoly of the profession. As a rule, however, the lady doctor was in no greater demand than her male rival, men still holding their own to some extent; for the world will ever see those women who prefer men to dance attendance on them. The profession was, indeed, pretty equally divided between the sexes; most mothers preferring females to prescribe for their children in times of dangerous sickness, believing that they were more successful in their treatment of the troubles of childhood. Besides, it followed as a natural consequence that as the lady accoucheur brought the child into the world, which was the invariable custom, it was only fair that she should have the medical care of the little one afterwards. The serious infant mortality which prevailed among the lower orders up to the close of the nineteenth century, was now so reduced, that parents, as a rule, succeeded in rearing their families intact. Greater enlightenment in the methods of their upbringing, together with superior sanitary arrangements of the domicile, no doubt tended largely towards effecting this change. Small families being the rule, instead of the exception, it must be admitted that with a lesser number to provide for, greater care and comfort could be bestowed upon their offspring; so that the reduction of the birthrate had the effect of reducing the death-rate; this fact combined with increased longevity of the adult, quite doubled the average of human life. The difference in dress between men and women was not great; the sexes were mostly distinguishable by the method of dressing their hair.