267.  There is now, however, this inconvenience, that the far greater part of the present young women have been be-Jennered; so that they may catch the beauty-killing disease from their babies!  To hearten them up, however, and more especially, I confess, to record a trait of maternal affection and of female heroism, which I have never heard of any thing to surpass, I have the pride to say, that my wife had eight children inoculated at her breast, and never had the small-pox in her life.  I, at first, objected to the inoculating of the child, but she insisted upon it, and with so much pertinacity that I gave way, on condition that she would be inoculated too.  This was done with three or four of the children, I think, she always being reluctant to have it done, saying that it looked like distrusting the goodness of God.  There was, to be sure, very little in this argument; but the long experience wore away the alarm; and there she is now, having had eight children hanging at her breast with that desolating disease in them, and she never having been affected by it from first to last.  All her children knew, of course, the risk that she voluntarily incurred for them.  They all have this indubitable proof, that she valued their lives above her own; and is it in nature, that they should ever wilfully do any thing to wound the heart of that mother; and must not her bright example have great effect on their character and conduct!  Now, my opinion is, that the far greater part of English or American women, if placed in the above circumstances, would do just the same thing; and I do hope, that those, who have yet to be mothers, will seriously think of putting an end, as they have the power to do, to the disgraceful and dangerous quackery, the evils of which I have so fully proved.

268.  But there is, in the management of babies, something besides life, health, strength and beauty; and something too, without which all these put together are nothing worth; and that is sanity of mind.  There are, owing to various causes, some who are born ideots; but a great many more become insane from the misconduct, or neglect, of parents; and, generally, from the children being committed to the care of servants.  I knew, in Pennsylvania, a child, as fine, and as sprightly, and as intelligent a child as ever was born, made an ideot for life by being, when about three years old, shut into a dark closet, by a maid servant, in order to terrify it into silence.  The thoughtless creature first menaced it with sending it to ‘the bad place,’ as the phrase is there; and, at last, to reduce it to silence, put it into the closet, shut the door, and went out of the room.  She went back, in a few minutes, and found the child in a fit.  It recovered from that, but was for life an ideot.  When the parents, who had been out two days and two nights on a visit of pleasure, came home, they were told that the child had had a