little rascal, precious little attention have I had from your mamma since you came to town. I don't know but I am very sorry you are here."

Now, this is a subject upon which I have thought a great deal, and often wished I had wisdom to write about. It is a very nice point for a young wife to settle rightly—the respective claims of the helpless little baby, and those of the young husband, who has hitherto been the sole recipient of her caresses and care. The cry of that little baby is painful to him. He has not yet adjusted himself to the position of a father. It is a nice little creature, of course; but why need she be so much in the nursery and so little in the parlor? Why can't she delegate the washing, and dressing, and getting-to-sleep, to a nurse, and go about with him, as she used before it came. It is very dull to sit alone, waiting until all these processes have been gone through; and, beside, it is plain to see that, when he does wait till then, her vitality is so nearly exhausted that she has very little left to entertain him, or to go abroad for entertainment; and if she does the latter, she is so fearful that something may go wrong with that experimental first baby in her absence, that her anxiety becomes contagious, and his pleasure is spoiled.

Now, to begin with: it takes two years for a young married couple to adjust themselves to their new position. "His mother never fussed that way over her babies, and is not he a living example of the virtue of neglect?" Now "her mother preferred to do just as she is doing, and thought any other course heartless and unnatural, at least while the baby is so very little." Now stop a bit, my dears, or you never will get beyond that milestone on your journey. You have got, both of you, to drop your respective mothers, as far as quoting their practice is concerned. Never mention them to one another, if you can possibly keep your mouths shut on their superior virtues, when you wish to settle any such question; because it will always remain true, to the end of time, that a husband's relations, like the king, can do no wrong, though they may be in the constant practice of doing that in their own families, which they consider highly improper in yours.

Now, do you and John—I suppose his name is John—two-thirds of the men are named John, and the Johns are always great strapping fellows—do you and John just paddle your own canoe, as they do. It is yours, isn't it? Well, steer it, day by day, by the light you have, as well as you know how. Mind that you both pull together; shut down outside interference, which is the cause of two-thirds of the unhappiness of the newly married, and you will be certain to do well enough, at last.

When a clergyman comes to a new congregation, or a school-teacher to an untried school—when a new business partner enters a firm—nobody expects things to go right immediately, without a hitch or two, till matters adjust themselves. It is only in the cases of newly converted persons, or the newly married, that people insist upon human nature becoming immediately, and instantaneously, sublimated and fit for heaven. Now in both cases, as I take it, time must be given, as in the other relations, for assimilation.

This point being conceded,—and I am supposing, my dear reader, that you are not quite a natural fool,—why should you or the young couple consider the whole thing a failure, merely because this process cannot be accomplished in a day and without a few mistakes, any more than in the cases above cited?

But we have left that little experimental first baby kicking too long on the bed—it is time we return to him. Now, I am very sorry that John said what he did to that young mother, even "in joke." She knew well enough that he meant two-thirds of it. She is not quite strong yet either, for the baby is but three months old; and it is very true that it does cry a great deal; and though she don't mind it, John does; and really, she can't leave it much with a nurse, while it is so very little. And yet, it is dull for John to sit alone in the parlor while she is soothing it; and what shall she do? That's just it,—what shall she do? She really gets in quite a nervous tremble, when it is time for him to come home—what with hoping baby will be on its good behavior, and fearing that it may not. Not that, for one instant, she has ever been sorry that she was a mother—oh no, no! You may burn her flesh with a red-hot iron, and you can never make her say that. God forbid!

Now, John, if your little wife loves her baby like that, is not it a proof that you have chosen a wife wisely and well? and are you not willing to face like a man—I should say, like a woman,—the petty disagreeables which are consequent upon the initiatory life of the little creature in whose veins flows your own blood? Surely, you cannot answer me no. When you married, you did not expect to live a bachelor's life. If you did, then I have nothing more to say. I shall pay that compliment to your manhood to suppose, that you did not so deceive the young girl, who trusted her future in your hands, and that you did not expect that she alone was to practice the virtue of self-abnegation.

Well, then, be patient with the wife who is so well worthy of your sympathy and co-operation, in this, her conscientious attempt to bring up rightly the first baby. When the next comes, and I know you will have a next, or your name isn't John, she will not be so anxious. She will not think it will die, every time it has the stomach-ache. But at present it is cruel in you to say those things which distress her, even "in joke," because, as I tell you, she is trying faithfully to settle these important questions, which take time for each of you to decide, so that you may not wrong the other. Help her do it. Soothe her when she is nervous and weary. Love that little baby, though at present it does not even smile at you. If you can't love it, make believe love it, till the little thing knows enough to know you. Do it for her sake, who has earned your tenderest cherishing as the mother of your child. Begin right. Know that whatsoever people may say, that Love and Duty are all there is of life. Out of these two grow all the pleasure and happiness mortals can find this side of the grave. So, John, don't wear out your boots trudging round elsewhere to find them, for it will be a miserable failure.

I think every woman will agree with me, that it is perfectly astonishing the "muss" (to use a New Yorkism) which a male pair of hands can make in your room in the short space of five minutes. You have put everything in that dainty order, without which you could not, for the life of you, accomplish any work. There is not a particle of dust on anything, in sight, or out of sight—which last is quite as important. All your little pet things are in the right location; pictures plumb on the wall, work-box and ink-stand tidy and within hail. Mr. Smith comes in. He wants "a bit of string." Mr. Smith is always wanting a bit of string. Mr. Smith says kindly (good fellow) "don't get up, dear, I'll find it." That's just what you are afraid of, but it won't do to say so; so you sit still and perspire, while Mr. Smith looks for his "bit of string." First, he throws open the door of the wrong closet, and knocks down all your dresses, which he catches up with irreverent haste, and hangs in a heap on the first peg. Then he says (innocently,) "Oh—h—I went to the wrong closet, didn't I?" Then he proceeds to the right closet, and finds the "bit of string." In taking it down he catches it on the neck of a phial. Down it comes smash—with the contents on the floor. Mr. Smith says "D—estruction!" in which remark you fully coincide. Then Mr. Smith wants a pair of scissors to cut his "bit of string;" so he goes to your work-box, which he upsets, scattering needles, literally at "sixes and sevens," all