es, too; but I began right. I set down my foot that they should lie
still, and they did; and if they cried, I never lighted a candle, or
took 'em up, or took any kind of notice of it; and so, after a little,
they went off to sleep. Babies very soon find out where they can take
advantage, and where they can't. It's nothing but temper makes babies
cry; and if I couldn't hush 'em any other way, I should give 'em a few
good smart slaps, and they would soon learn to behave themselves."

"But, dear Mrs. Exact, you were a strong, healthy woman, and had strong,
healthy children."

"Well, isn't that baby of Mrs. Evans's healthy, I want to know? I'm sure
it is a great creature, and thrives and grows fat as fast as ever I saw
a child. You needn't tell me anything is the matter with that child but
temper, and its mother's coddling management."

Now, in the neighborhood where she lives, Mrs. Alexander Exact is the
wonderful woman, the Lady Bountiful, the pattern female. Her cake never
rises on one side, or has a heavy streak in it. Her furs never get a
moth in them; her carpets never fade; her sweetmeats never ferment; her
servants never neglect their work; her children never get things out of
order; her babies never cry, never keep one awake o' nights; and her
husband never in his life said, "My dear, there's a button off my
shirt." Flies never infest her kitchen, cockroaches and red ants never
invade her premises, a spider never had time to spin a web on one of her
walls. Everything in her establishment is shining with neatness, crisp
and bristling with absolute perfection,--and it is she, the
ever-up-and-dressed, unsleeping, wide-awake, omnipresent, never-tiring
Mrs. Exact, that does it all.

Besides keeping her household ways thus immaculate, Mrs. Exact is on all
sorts of charitable committees, does all sorts of fancy-work for fairs;
and whatever she does is done perfectly. She is a most available, most
helpful, most benevolent woman, and general society has reason to
rejoice in her existence.

But, for all this, Mrs. Exact is as intolerant as Torquemada or a
locomotive-engine. She has her own track, straight and inevitable; her
judgments and opinions cut through society in right lines, with all the
force of her example and all the steam of her energy, turning out
neither for the old nor the young, the weak nor the weary. She cannot,
and she will not, conceive the possibility that there may be other sorts
of natures than he