t sun beats down on
the small upturned face, and the ignorant creature in charge goes on
with her flirtation, or her gossip, or her novel. The child may be at
shrieking point from lying long in one position, but there is no one
to comprehend its necessity. During those awful hours in which its
teeth force their way through hot and swollen gums--hours which would
bring from adults unwritable exclamations--the forsaken little
sufferer is at the mercy of some sleepy, self-indulgent woman, who has
no love for it. Why, indeed, should she? If it were a matter of
catechism, how many educated women would be capable of nursing
good-naturedly for weeks a fretful, sick child not their own?

As for these neglected babies of pleasure-seeking women, they suffer
terribly, but then their mothers are having what they consider a
perfectly lovely time, posing at the opera or gyrating in some
ballroom, exquisitely dressed, and laughing as lightly as if there
were no painful echoes from their neglected nurseries. For no nurse is
apt to complain of her baby, she knows her business and her interest
too well for that; she prefers to speak comfortable words, and vows
the "little darling grows better and better every hour, God bless it!"
and, so assured, the mother goes airily away, telling herself that her
nurse is a perfect treasure. Whatever other nurses may do, she knows
that her nurse is reliable. The fact is that, even where there are
children in a nursery able to complain of the wrongs and cruelties
they have to endure, they very seldom dare to do so. Mamma is a dear,
beautiful lady, very far off; nurse is an ever-present power, capable
of making them suffer still more. And mamma does not like to hear
tales, she always appears annoyed at anything against nurse. They look
into their mother's face with eyes full of their sad story, if she
only had the heart to understand; but they dare not speak, and very
soon they are remanded back to their cruel keeper with a kiss, and an
injunction to "be good, and do as nurse tells them."

Consider the women to whom this class of mothers delegate their
high office,--an office for which hardly any love or wisdom is
sufficient. It would scarcely be possible in the whole world to
find any persons more unfit for it. Taking this class as a whole,
these very mothers are never tired of expatiating upon its gross
immorality, deceitfulness, greed, and dishonesty; yet they do not
hesitate to leave the very live