teeth more difficult and painful. Let us always take instinct as
our guide; we never see puppies practising their budding teeth on
pebbles, iron, or bones, but on wood, leather, rags, soft materials
which yield to their jaws, and on which the tooth leaves its mark.

We can do nothing simply, not even for our children. Toys of
silver, gold, coral, cut crystal, rattles of every price and kind;
what vain and useless appliances. Away with them all! Let us have
no corals or rattles; a small branch of a tree with its leaves and
fruit, a stick of liquorice which he may suck and chew, will amuse
him as well as these splendid trifles, and they will have this
advantage at least, he will not be brought up to luxury from his
birth.

It is admitted that pap is not a very wholesome food. Boiled milk
and uncooked flour cause gravel and do not suit the stomach. In
pap the flour is less thoroughly cooked than in bread and it has
not fermented. I think bread and milk or rice-cream are better. If
you will have pap, the flour should be lightly cooked beforehand.
In my own country they make a very pleasant and wholesome soup from
flour thus heated. Meat-broth or soup is not a very suitable food
and should be used as little as possible. The child must first get
used to chewing his food; this is the right way to bring the teeth
through, and when the child begins to swallow, the saliva mixed
with the food helps digestion.

I would have them first chew dried fruit or crusts. I should give
them as playthings little bits of dry bread or biscuits, like
the Piedmont bread, known in the country as "grisses." By dint of
softening this bread in the mouth some of it is eventually swallowed