"It is a most pernicious custom to stop every cry of a child with food, whether it is done from the idea that it needs so frequent nourishment, or to make it quiet. Inquire why the infant cries, and remove the cause, if it can be discovered. It will be more rarely the want of food, in proportion as it has been accustomed to regularity. If the child is irregularly fed, it acquires bad habits, it departs from _order_, ('Heaven's first law,') whose first principles should be implanted in man while instinct still governs him. But the infant who is thus accustomed to excess, soon becomes _inordinate_ in its demands, and TEMPERANCE and ORDER, the great pillars of life, are both overthrown. It will become greedy when it is unseasonably fed, even with simple food, and the evil becomes still greater when it is pampered with delicacies. An artificial necessity is produced for continual gratification of the palate, so that it will often not be pacified without having something pleasant to the taste constantly in its mouth; and upon this, the whole enjoyment of its young life depends. The sense of taste checks the progress of every noble sense; the child concentrates its whole thoughts on the enjoyment of this single appetite. In this way, it is prepared to become, not only an epicurean, but a sensualist; and the obvious evils of overloading the stomach and producing disease are not the only evils arising from this treatment. The _moral character_ is also injured before it is fairly developed. The child thus miseducated, becomes obstinate and self-willed. If its demands are not satisfied, (and its cries are demands,) it will soon learn to fret itself, almost into childish insanity. See now the seeds of moral corruption implanted in the physical soil, whose roots strike deeper in proportion as they are sown earlier!