The choice is all the more important because her foster-child should
have no other guardian, just as he should have no teacher but his
tutor. This was the custom of the ancients, who talked less but
acted more wisely than we. The nurse never left her foster-daughter;
this is why the nurse is the confidante in most of their plays.
A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well
brought up.

At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually
tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with
it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up
people with no more sense than children the authority of age
is destroyed and his education is ruined. A child should know no
betters but its father and mother, or failing them its foster-mother
and its tutor, and even this is one too many, but this division is
inevitable, and the best that can be done in the way of remedy is
that the man and woman who control him shall be so well agreed with
regard to him that they seem like one.

The nurse must live rather more comfortably, she must have rather
more substantial food, but her whole way of living must not
be altered, for a sudden change, even a change for the better, is
dangerous to health, and since her usual way of life has made her
healthy and strong, why change it?

Country women eat less meat and more vegetables than towns-women,
and this vegetarian diet seems favourable rather than otherwise to
themselves and their children. When they take nurslings from the
upper classes they eat meat and broth with the idea that they will
form better chyle and supply more milk. I do not hold with this