that claimed the name of life, was met by the command, "Take care of him!
take care of him!" said my mother to the doctor; "Take care of him!" said
the doctor to the nurse; and "Take care of him!" added my delighted father
to every individual of the rejoicing household.

The doctor's care manifested itself in an over-dose of castor oil; the
nurse, in the plenitude of her bounty, nearly parboiled me in an
over-heated bath; my mother drugged me with a villanous decoction of
soothing syrup, which brought on a slumber so sound that the first had
very nearly proved my last; and the entire household dandled me with such
uncommon vigour that I was literally tossed and "Catchee-catchee'd" into a
fit of most violent convulsions. As I persisted in surviving, so did I
become the heir to fresh torments from the ceaseless care of those by whom
I was surrounded. My future symmetry was superinduced by bandaging my
infant limbs until I looked like a miniature mummy. The summer's sun was
too hot and the winter's blast too cold; wet was death, and dry weather
was attended with easterly winds. I was "taken care of." I never breathed
the fresh air of Heaven, but lived in an artificial nursery atmosphere of
sea-coal and logs.

Young limbs are soon broken, and young children will fall, if not taken
care of; consequently upon any instinctive attempt at a pedestrian
performance I was tied round the middle with a broad ribbon, my unhappy
little feet see-sawing in the air, and barely brushing the ruffled surface
of the Persian carpet, while I appeared like a tempting bait, with which
my nurse, after the manner of an experienced angler, was bobbing for some
of the strange monsters worked into the gorgeous pattern.

Crooked legs were "taken care of" by a brace of symmetrical iron shackles,
and Brobdignag walnut-shells, decorated with flaming bows of crimson