one of these well-meaning persons, even for a few days, will
demoralise a whole nursery. Tempers grow wild and unruly, sleep
disappears, fretfulness and irritability take its place. Yet of most
mothers it is probably true that they are neither strikingly
proficient nor utterly deficient in the power of managing children. If
they lack the gift that comes naturally to some women, they learn from
experience and grow instinctively to feel when they have made a false
step with the child. Although by dearly bought experience they learn
wisdom in the management of their children, they nevertheless may not
study the subject with the same care which they devote to matters of
diet and hygiene. It is the mother whose education and understanding
best fits her for this task. In this country a separate nursery and a
separate nursery life for the children is found in nearly all
households among the well-to-do, and the care for the physical needs
of the children is largely taken off the mothers' shoulders by nurses
and nursemaids. That this arrangement is advantageous on the whole
cannot be doubted. In America and on the Continent, where the children
often mingle all day in the general life of the household, and occupy
the ordinary living rooms, experience shows that nerve strain and its
attendant evils are more common than with us. Nevertheless, the
arrangement of a separate nursery has its disadvantages. Nurses are
sometimes not sufficiently educated to have much appreciation of the
mental processes of the child. If the children are restless and
nervous they are content to attribute this to naughtiness or to
constipation, or to some other physical ailment. Their time is usually
so fully occupied that they cannot be expected to be very zealous in
reading books on the management of children. Nevertheless, in
practical matters of detail a good nurse will learn rapidly from a
mother who has given some attention to the subject, and who is able to
give explicit instructions upon definite points.