she's nervous. She can't do her sewing
decently, because she's nervous. Why, I might have been as nervous as
she is, if I'd have petted and coddled myself as she does. But I get up
early, take a walk in the fresh air of a mile or so before breakfast,
and come home feeling the better for it. I do all my own sewing,--never
put out a stitch; and I flatter myself my things are made as they ought
to be. I always make my boys' shirts and Mr. Exact's, and they are made
as shirts ought to be,--and yet I find plenty of time for calling,
shopping, business, and company. It only requires management and
resolution."

"It is perfectly wonderful, to be sure, Mrs. Exact, to see all that you
do; but don't you get very tired sometimes?"

"No, not often. I remember, though, the week before last Christmas, I
made and baked eighteen pies and ten loaves of cake in one day, and I
was really quite worn out; but I didn't give way to it. I told Mr. Exact
I thought it would rest me to take a drive into New York and attend the
Sanitary Fair, and so we did. I suppose Mrs. Evans would have thought
she must go to bed and coddle herself for a month."

"But, dear Mrs. Exact, when a woman is kept awake nights by crying
babies"--

"There's no need of having crying babies; my babies never cried; it's
just as you begin with children. I might have had to be up and down
every hour of the night with mine, just as Mrs. Evans does; but I knew
better. I used to take 'em up about ten o'clock, and feed and make 'em
all comfortable; and that was the last of 'em, till I was ready to get
up in the morning. I never lost a night's sleep with any of mine."

"Not when they were teething?"

"No. I knew how to manage that. I used to lance their gums myself, and I
never had any trouble: it's all in management. I weaned 'em all myself,
too: there's no use in having any fuss in weaning children."

"Mrs. Exact, you are a wonderful manager; but it would be impossible to
bring up all babies so."

"You'll never make me believe that: people only need to begin right. I'm
sure I've had a trial of eight."

"But there's that one baby of Mrs. Evans's makes more trouble than all
your eight. It cries every night so that somebody has to be up walking
with it; it wears out all the nurses, and keeps poor Mrs. Evans sick
all the time."

"Not the least need of it; nothing but shiftless management. Suppose I
had allowed my children to be walked with; I might have had terrible
tim