as soon as possible.  It causes sleep more, and oftener, than necessary:  it saves trouble; but to take trouble was our duty.  After the second child, we had no cradle, however difficult at first to do without it.  When I was not at my business, it was generally my affair to put the child to sleep:  sometimes by sitting with it in my arms, and sometimes by lying down on a bed with it, till it fell asleep.  We soon found the good of this method.  The children did not sleep so much, but they slept more soundly.  The cradle produces a sort of dosing, or dreaming sleep.  This is a matter of great importance, as every thing must be that has any influence on the health of children.  The poor must use the cradle, at least until they have other children big enough to hold the baby, and to put it to sleep; and it is truly wonderful at how early an age they, either girls or boys, will do this business faithfully and well.  You see them in the lanes, and on the skirts of woods and commons, lugging a baby about, when it sometimes weighs half as much as the nurse.  The poor mother is frequently compelled, in order to help to get bread for her children, to go to a distance from home, and leave the group, baby and all, to take care of the house and of themselves, the eldest of four or five, not, perhaps, above six or seven years old; and it is quite surprising, that, considering the millions of instances in which this is done in England, in the course of a year, so very, very few accidents or injuries arise from the practice; and not a hundredth part so many as arise in the comparatively few instances in which children are left to the care of servants.  In summer time you see these little groups rolling about up the green, or amongst the heath, not far from the cottage, and at a mile, perhaps, from any other dwelling, the dog their only protector.  And what fine and straight and healthy and fearless and acute persons they become!  It used to be remarked in Philadelphia, when I lived there, that there was not a single man of any eminence, whether doctor, lawyer, merchant, trader, or any thing else, that had not been born and bred in the country, and of parents in a low state of life.  Examine London, and you will find it much about the same.  From this very childhood they are from necessity entrusted with the care of something valuable.  They practically learn to think, and to calculate as to consequences.  They are thus taught to remember things; and it is quite surprising what memories they have, and how scrupulously a little carter-boy will deliver half-a-dozen messages, each of a different purport from the rest, to as many persons, all the messages committed to him at one and the same time, and he not knowing one letter of the alphabet from another.  When I want to remember something, and am out in the field, and cannot write it down, I say to one of the men, or boys, come to me at such a time, and tell me so and so.  He is sure to do it; and I therefore