CHAPTER VI.
OUTDOOR DRESS AND EXERCISE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN.
I CAN easily imagine how, after reading the foregoing, where I advocate short clothes for even the youngest infants, many a lady exclaimed, "Why, how absurd a baby so dressed would look lying in the nurse's arms when it went out for a walk!" Very likely; but that question does not concern me in the slightest degree; for I do not approve of babies being carried out in the nurses' arms at all. I will give my reasons for this rather startling proposition in as few words as possible. When infants are carried in the streets, they are generally in unnatural and injurious positions, as with the head hanging over the arm, so that a spectator fears the neck may be dislocated, or with the feet turned inwards, &c. They are usually carried on the left arm of the nurse, and affectionately hugged so closely to her, that the right arm of the child is pressed against its chest. The chest-walls of infants partaking of the gristly and easily bent nature of all infants' bones, the side of the chest is pressed inwards, lessening the lung capacity. Then, also, the child's head leans naturally to one
