You afford me great pleasure, my dear child, by the accounts you give me of the attention you pay to your health. In your present situation, it is an indispensable duty, though unfortunately at this time, is not thought so. Remember what your opinion was of a Lady who was ordered by her Physician to keep her chamber for four months, for fear she should miscarry. She declared, ‘Such caution did not agree with her vivacity’, and by that agreeable vivacity she lost her child. You then thought she must have a very bad heart to be capable of such imprudent conduct, and a worse understanding to suffer it to be made known. I am charmed with you for having maintained this opinion; and that, notwithstanding fashion and example, you will not set up late, or fatigue yourself by constant visiting or travelling far in a carriage. In regard to the desire you have for suckling your child, I have some observations to make, which require me to be particular. You appear to be much struck with all that Rousseau says on this subject; among other things he says, ‘She who suckles the child of another person instead of her own, is a bad mother; how then can she be a good nurse?’ This observation of his has given you great reluctance to trust ‘your child to the cares of an interested and mercenary woman.’ But you do not consider, this woman only deprives her infant of milk, to ensure him his bread, or at least to provide him with those necessaries, of which, without this sacrifice, he would stand in need. So far from being a ‘bad mother,’ she has, on the contrary, shewed herself to be possessed of real tenderness. Nature has undoubtedly convinced us of the pleasing obligations we are under to suckle our children; and we ought not to dispense with it, but when we are obliged by still more essential duties.