of him, wise contrivance must surround him. The soft, new, living thing
must be watched for every sign of discomfort, it must be weighed and
measured, it must be thought about, it must be talked to and sung to,
skilfully and properly, and presently it must be given things to see
and handle that the stirring germ of its mind may not go unsatisfied.
From the very beginning, if we are to do our best for a child, there
must be forethought and knowledge quite beyond the limit of instinct's
poor equipment.

Now, for a child to have all these needs supplied implies certain other
conditions. The constant loving attention is to be got only from a
mother or from some well-affected girl or woman. It is not a thing to
be hired for money, nor contrivable on any wholesale plan. Possibly
there may be ways of cherishing and nursing infants by wholesale that
will keep them alive, but at best these are second best ways, and we
are seeking the best possible. A very noble, exceptionally loving and
quite indefatigable woman might conceivably direct the development of
three or four little children from their birth onward, or, with very
good assistance, even of six or seven at a time, as well as a good
mother could do for one, but it would be a very rare and wonderful
thing. We must put that aside as an exceptional thing, quite impossible
to provide when it is most needed, and we must fall back upon the fact
that the child must have a mother or nurse--and it must have that
attendant exclusively to itself for the first year or so of life. The
mother or nurse must be in health, physically and morally, well fed and
contented, and able to give her attention mainly, if not entirely, to
the little child. The child must lie warmly in a well-ventilated room,
with some one availably in hearing day and night, there must be
plentiful warm water to wash it, plenty of wrappings and towellings and
so forth for it; it is best to take it often into the open air, and for