Page:An address to women (Goodwin).djvu/17

 your cottage difficulties. Poor people who have to live in cottages have an amount of trouble, an amount of trial of temper to go through, which richer people do not know very much about. In speaking to persons who live in cottages I would endeavour carefully to bear this in mind.

But take a different case. There is one thing that will happen in the best-regulated families, and that is the baby will sometimes cry. Suppose little Jack has got a bad cold, or has taken something that does not agree with him, and can't sleep, and you don't want to make him sleep by any artificial means—you don't give him Godfrey's Cordial, I hope—I am not a physician, but I know that that method is wrong—well. Jack can't sleep, and a poor woman is kept up at night, and cannot sleep because her baby is crying: there may be another child in the room: perhaps he is poorly too; then comes the inevitable six o'clock in the morning, when everybody gets up, and then the woman has her day's work before her. Perhaps she has to get dinner ready for her husband, and at the same time has her sick child to look after. It is undoubtedly a life involving a great deal of work and anxiety. I mention this not because I can tell you how this is to be cured, but because I wish to say how