Infants should not be carried always on the same arm, for there is danger of contracting a habit of leaning to one side, and thus of becoming crooked. On this account, the arm on which they rest should be often changed. Nor should they be grasped too firmly. A skilful mother will hold a child quite loosely, with the most perfect safety; while an inexperienced one will grasp him so hard as to expose the soft bones to be bent out of their place, and yet be quite as liable to let him fall as she who handles him with more ease and freedom. SEC. 3. _Creeping._ "Mankind must creep before they can walk," is an old adage often used to remind us of that patient application which is so indispensable to secure any highly important or valuable end. But it is as true literally, as it is figuratively. The act of creeping exercises in a remarkable degree nearly all the muscles of the body; and this, too, without much fatigue. Some mothers there indeed are, who think it a happy circumstance if a child can be taught to walk without this intermediate step. But such mothers must have strange ideas of the animal economy. They must never have thought of the pleasure which creeping affords the mind, or of the vigor it imparts to the body. Children are wonderfully pleased with their own voluntary efforts. What they can do themselves, yields them ten-fold greater pleasure than if done by the mother or the nurse. Yet the latter are exceedingly prone to forget or overlook all this--and to say, at least practically, that the only proper efforts are those to which themselves give direction. They are moreover exceedingly fond of display. Some mothers seem to act--in all they do with and for children--as if all the latter were good for, was display and amusement. They feed them, indeed, and strive to prolong their existence; but it appears to be for similar reasons to those which would lead them to take kind care of a pet lamb. It is on this account that they dress them out in the manner they do, strive to make them sit up straight, and prohibit their creeping. It is on this account too, as much perhaps as any other, that go-carts and leading strings are put in such early requisition. The contrary would be far the safer extreme; and the parent who keeps his child scrambling about upon the back as long as possible, and when he cannot prevent longer an inversion of this position, retains him at creeping as long as is in his power, is as much wiser, in comparison with him who urges him forward to make a prodigy of him, as he is who, instead of making his child a prodigy in mind or morals at premature age, holds him back, and endeavors to have his mental and moral nature developed no faster than his physical frame.