246 MORE POT-POURRI 



should increase in weight during the first month. I 

 was always under the impression when young that a 

 delicate mother, and especially one threatened with con- 

 sumption, ought on no account to nurse her child. In 

 the lecture from which I quoted before. Sir Richard 

 Thorne Thome says that ' there is no sterilising appa- 

 ratus that can give results comparable with those 

 provided by nature in the healthy female breast, and 

 that tuberculosis in the human milk glands is a disease 

 so rare that it hardly needs consideration in connection 

 with the feeding of infants. At the child-bearing age 

 it is all but unknown.' I extract this because I think 

 it will help many a young mother to fight the opposition 

 of perhaps both her husband and the doctor, who may 

 be thinking, as is natural, more of what they consider 

 good for her than for the child. 



I heard yesterday, in our village, an excellent lecture 

 by a young mother on what she called the ' New Educa- 

 tion.' I agreed with every word, and had myself tried 

 to carry it out many years ago. It is sad that what she 

 propounded has made so little way these five -and - 

 twenty or thirty years. Her recommendations were 

 much on the lines of a book first published in 1868, 

 called 'Essays on Educational Reformers,' by Robert 

 Herbert Quick. I only did not mention this book 

 before, much as it interested me years ago, and much as 

 I admire it still, because I thought it was out of print 

 and not to be got. Now it is republished by Longmans, 

 Green &Co., in a cheap edition (2s. 3d.) and arranged 

 on a clearer plan. Get it, you young mothers, and read 

 it. It is the most comprehensive and illuminating book 

 that I have ever seen on the all-important subject. It is 

 far better known in America than in England. The 

 chapter on Pestalozzi is perhaps especially excellent. 

 Nature should be helped by art, and art should come to 



