At the end of ten days the two sons of Aesculapius appeared and made their examination and said all was right, whereupon I told them how badly their bandages worked and what I had done myself.  They smiled at each other, and one said: 

“Well, after all, a mother’s instinct is better than a man’s reason.”

“Thank you, gentlemen, there was no instinct about it.  I did some hard thinking before I saw how I could get a pressure on the shoulder without impeding the circulation, as you did.”

Thus, in the supreme moment of a young mother’s life, when I needed tender care and support, I felt the whole responsibility of my child’s supervision; but though uncertain at every step of my own knowledge, I learned another lesson in self-reliance.  I trusted neither men nor books absolutely after this, either in regard to the heavens above or the earth beneath, but continued to use my “mother’s instinct,” if “reason” is too dignified a term to apply to woman’s thoughts.  My advice to every mother is, above all other arts and sciences, study first what relates to babyhood, as there is no department of human action in which there is such lamentable ignorance.

At the end of six weeks my nurse departed, and I had a good woman in her place who obeyed my orders, and now a new difficulty arose from an unexpected quarter.  My father and husband took it into their heads that the child slept too much.  If not awake when they wished to look at him or to show him to their friends, they would pull him out of his crib on all occasions.  When I found neither of them was amenable to reason on this point, I locked the door, and no amount of eloquent pleading ever gained them admittance during the time I considered sacred to the baby’s slumbers.  At six months having, as yet, had none of the diseases supposed to be inevitable, the boy weighed thirty pounds.  Then the stately Peter came again into requisition, and in his strong arms the child spent many of his waking hours.  Peter, with a long, elephantine gait, slowly wandered over the town, lingering especially in the busy marts of trade.  Peter’s curiosity had strengthened with years, and, wherever a crowd gathered round a monkey and hand organ, a vender’s wagon, an auction stand, or the post office at mail time, there stood Peter, black as coal, with “the beautiful boy in white,” the most conspicuous figure in the crowd.  As I told Peter never to let children kiss the baby, for fear of some disease, he kept him well aloft, allowing no affectionate manifestations except toward himself.

My reading, at this time, centered on hygiene.  I came to the conclusion, after much thought and observation, that children never cried unless they were uncomfortable.  A professor at Union College, who used to combat many of my theories, said he gave one of his children a sound spanking at six weeks, and it never disturbed him a night afterward.  Another Solomon told me that a very weak preparation of opium would keep a