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CHAP. I.] instincts of the beast a better protection to her young than the reason of the woman.

There is a vague sort of maternal instinct in woman which, as in the beast, generally teaches her to love and to defend her children from violence, but which is wholly powerless to enable her to guard them against the insidious attack of disease or the misery of feeble vitality. Yet, on the strength of this feeling, mothers are apt to believe that the very fact of maternity confers on them the knowledge of how best to rear their offspring. They resent almost as an insult the suggestion that a certain amount of study is absolutely necessary to obtain this knowledge.

A short time back I met with a good illustration of how thoroughly ignorant of the first principles of health a so-called "highly educated lady" may be. On one of the hottest days in July I was at a garden party amongst a group of young married women, when one of the guests chanced to say that I had lately been lecturing on how to dress children. "Oh, indeed," said one young matron, conspicuous for her squeezed-in waist and general air of affectation. "What a strange subject for Miss Ballin to choose; she ought to leave that to married ladies, who have the necessary experience." A few minutes after, this lady remarked that her baby was very ill—"it seemed to suffer so much with the heat." The hostess then asked her if the baby was short-coated yet, as it was quite old enough; whereupon the experienced one made answer that she had bought the clothes, but that,