Another most excellent thing to have in a nursery where there are growing children would be a regular hammock on good supports, to be erected or taken away at will, and to be sufficiently low to ensure that a fall therefrom would do no harm. This hammock would be as useful as a sofa, and as amusing as a swing, without the disagreeable after-effects and danger; and, of course, it should be heaped with the humble pillows, made of curled paper, in linen cases, which are so invaluable, because they cost nothing, and can be thrown about genially without doing any amount of damage at all. The walls of the nursery must either be pictureless or embellished by really good autotypes, sufficient of which can be procured for about £5 for quite a large room. For let nothing allow any mother to put up the glaring vulgar nursery pictures which one sees so often in children’s rooms, and which undoubtedly vitiate the children’s tastes, and give them bad and false ideas of art from their earliest days. Then, too, I most thoroughly recommend that the amount of toys allowed be of the smallest: a Noah’s ark, a really good box of bricks, a horse and cart, dolls, and a nice doll’s house are quite sufficient for any small person. The child who is dependent on a constant supply of mechanical and expensive toys is a poor thing, and is never likely to grow up to be much good to itself or to anyone else. If we arrange our nursery on these lines, and have the dressing-room also, we should require the simple bed for the nurse only to be brought into the room for use at night, and the dressing-room should be entirely kept for dressing purposes. Our nursery needs a good cupboard. Wallace sells a good deal ‘linen cupboard,’ which, painted ‘real ivory,’ or electric turquoise enamel, makes a capital nursery wardrobe, and here the child’s clothes should be kept, while the nurse should have one of Wallace’s indispensable corner wardrobes for her dresses, which costs by the way the ridiculous sum of 28s. All that is required besides is a combination piece of furniture with drawers--toilet-table and washing-stand combined--and which would give her ample space for all the linen she possesses. One of Shoolbred’s small bamboo cupboard-tables would hold boots and shoes and bonnets quite well, and no accumulations of any kind should be allowed. The nurse’s box must never be kept in either room, but be relegated at once to the box-room; and directly a child’s garment is outgrown, or the worse for wear, let it be given away. The only good I have ever been able to see in a small house is, that no one can possibly hoard there. If hoarding is begun it cannot be carried on, because if it were, there would speedily be no room to turn round.