The Times in these dull days has fallen back upon
nurse- maids, perambulators, and the finer feelings of mothers and grandmothers. "A Mather and a Grandmother," "A Real Mother," " Mater," " A Mother of Seven," " An Old Hen," and, in short, all the materuities have been carrying on quite a lively correspondence as to the iniquities of nurse- maids, the cruelties of perambulators, and the imperative duty which attaches to the general public to follow all delinquent nurse- maids home, and then impress by popular deputation on the mothers the dangers to which they subject their children by trusting them to such hands. " A Real Mother " has a harrowing story of a tin soldier which she extricated from under an infant's tongue in Ken- sington Gardens. To "A Real Mother" "the cries of passion, sleepi- ness, pain are quite distinct sounds," and this was a cry of pain. She approached the infant, found its fingers in its mouth, extricated them, inserted her own fingers, came upon the tin soldier, and extricated him ; she remonstrated with a young nursemaid, who said she was not responsible, being only under-nursemaid,—the head nurse being with the younger baby talking to a friend under the trees. " A Real Mother " then tackled the head nurse, and exhorted her to be thankful that she had not the child's life to answer for; but the head nursemaid was not thankful, and was impertinent ;—whereupon " A Real Mother " becomes de- spondent, and confides to the Times her indignation against other mothers who are unreal. The extraction of the tin soldier was masterly as well as maternal,—but will an enlightened public opinion help us to extract other tin soldiers from under other infants' tongues ? The present editor at least would still hesitate, on the strength of his power to discriminate that a cry was a cry of pain and not of passion, to explore boldly an infant's gums and tongue for lurking tin soldiers. Indeed, we doubt the efficiency of " public opinion " to convert unreal mothers or nurseryinaids of any kind, real or unreal.
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