A year after the publication of _Notes on Nursing_, Miss Nightingale issued (1861) a modified edition of the work, under the title of _Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes_, adding a chapter on “Minding Baby,” which is specially addressed to young girls in working families, who have a great deal to do with minding mother’s baby. It is delightfully written and reveals how conversant the author was with the homes of the poor. It would do more good than many tracts if distributed by the district visitor, and would be a useful addition to the textbooks of our elementary schools. With her usual quick insight the Queen of Nurses recognises the importance of the working-girl nurse. “One-half of all the nurses in service,” she writes, “are girls of from five to twenty years old. You see you are very important little people. Then there are all the girls who are nursing mother’s baby at home; and in all these cases it seems pretty nearly to come to this, that baby’s health for its whole life depends upon you, girls, more than upon anything else.” Simple rules such as a girl of six could understand are given for the feeding, washing, dressing, nursing, and even amusement of that important person, “baby.” “The healthiest, happiest, liveliest, most beautiful baby I ever saw was the only child of a busy laundress,” writes Miss Nightingale; “she washed all day in a room with the door open upon a larger room, where she put the child. It sat or crawled upon the floor all day with no other play-fellow than a kitten, which it used to hug. Its mother kept it beautifully clean, and fed it with perfect regularity. The child was never frightened at anything. The room where it sat was the house-place; and it always gave notice to its mother when anybody came in, not by a cry, but by a crow. I lived for many months within hearing of that child, and never heard it cry day or night. I think there is a great deal too much of amusing children now; and not enough of letting them amuse themselves.”