head over heels, &c. Now, just imagine the nervous shock you would suffer if some great' giant were to treat you in this way, and then you will have some faint idea of the injury done by this practice to infants, whose nervous systems, remember, are much more easily disturbed than ours. I have little doubt that many an embryo poet or philosopher has literally had his brains addled in this way.
I read a very good illustration of the commonest form of this practice, as carried out by mothers, in a comic paper. Said a gentleman to his wife, who for the last hour had been shaking her baby up and down on her knee, "My dear, I don't think so much butter is good for the child." "Butter? I never give my Tootsy-Wootsy butter—what an idea!" "Well, you know, you gave him a good feed of milk, and now you've been over an hour churning it!"
If parents could only be made to understand the mischief done, not only to the nervous, but also to the digestive and circulatory systems of their children by this idiotic custom of jolting and tossing them about, as if they were mere inanimate toys, I am sure they would speedily abandon so harmful and irrational a practice. Children should not be rocked or patted off to sleep; but simply laid in their cots, and if for the first night or two they cry a little, this will not hurt them, but will rather be good mental discipline for the future; they will soon gain the habit of sleeping without external help. By rocking a baby, sleep is obtained
