Miss Fuller’s “Woman in the nineteenth century?” If so, my humble experience will be of little avail; for, as a wife and mother, I have trod a lowly path, and never dared step foot into the balloon of transcendentalism.
Again you say: “If one child is so much care, how can you manage five?”
Well might you ask, and I would answer, if you find that one, as you say, makes you half crazy, five will certainly send you to the insane asylum, unless upon the homoeopathic principle, “that which kills will cure.” But, the truth is, you lived in such a still, orderly way so long after your marriage, that the change seems more striking to you, and the care more onerous than it really is.
“But for a chapter of your experience;” and you shall have it; for, on glancing back upon what I have written, I find that it has a dictatorial air, which it ill becomes me to assume; and, to punish myself, I will give you a little sketch of my management with my first baby, that you may see I was far behind yourself in prudence and skill.
Need I tell any one who has been a mother, of the joy which one experiences at the birth of her first-born? It is like the glorious sunlight of morning after a night of storm and darkness; yea, like the rapture of heaven to the weary spirit, when she folds, for the first time, the young immortal to her bosom, and breathes from a full heart her gratitude to God. At least, such were my own feelings when my eldest, my precious child Arthur, was born.
I had read Grahame and Alcott, and a score of other writers upon the management of infants, and thought myself quite wise—certainly capable of criticising others—but now, all my wisdom forsook me, and I felt ignorant as a child. Our means were limited, and we were not able to hire just such help as we wished; but an old woman, who had had some little experience, was engaged, and so confident was she of her own abilities, that I yielded implicitly to her directions. When I remonstrated upon the use of pins, she exclaimed, “Lawful sake, ma’am! do you expect me to use these ere strings and loops? I never did afore, and you can’t expect me
