If you desire the wee lassie to grow up as tender as a mushroom and perhaps die just as soon, comparatively, then all you’ve got to do is to permit her to sleep night after night in a badly-ventilated stuffy room and to _plot her_. The verb “to plot” is essentially Scotch, but as applied to over-coddled children or young canaries or pigeons in a nest that the nervous mother is sweating to death, it is exceedingly expressive. Many of the Scotch words are derived from the French as, in olden times, the two nations were great allies. It would be going a little out of the way perhaps to seek its derivation from _sur le plat_, on the plate, as an egg when poached. A pig is plotted when boiling water is poured over it in order to get off the bristles easily, the cook plots herself when she gets a splash of hot water over her hands, a boy or man is said to be plotting himself when he wears more clothes than is wanted as a guard against the weather, and babies are all too often plotted in bed or bassinette. The single word “plotted” means sweated, blanched (_faire pâlir_), poached, all in one. Well, however nice a poached egg may be, poached baby looked at from a doctor’s point of view is very unsatisfactory. Now just think of the folly, not to say the iniquity, of treating a tender infant as many do. Here lies the mite at the mercy of a mother who may be wise, but who may be otherwise. It is already struggling with the arch-enemy, death. Pray do not misunderstand me: I do not mean to say it is dying, only from the very day we begin to live we begin to die, as it were, at least, to struggle against all that is inimical to life. And life is change, you know, merely that. “I live, therefore I must die.” But we want to keep the spark in this little body, and what is more we want to fan it into health that shall fill every vein and nerve in its body, and produce future health, happiness, and strength. In order to do this, in order to give the child a chance to grow out of its inherited weakness (I do not say “disease,” for that is an ugly word, and quite unnecessary), we must place it under conditions most favourable to existence.