After thirteen months of perfect happiness, its planning and dreaming, the baby was taken from us.

The blow fell without warning.  I left home that morning, with Mother and the baby waving their usual farewells to me from the window.  Early that afternoon, contrary to my usual custom, I decided to go home in advance of my regular time.  I had no reason for doing this, aside from a strange unwillingness to continue at work.  I recalled later that I cleaned up my desk and put away a number of things, as though I were going away for some time.  I never before had done that, and nothing had occurred which might make me think I should not be back at my desk as usual.

When I reached home the baby was suffering from a slight fever, and Mother already had called the doctor in.  He diagnosed it as only a slight disturbance.  During dinner, I thought baby’s breathing was not as regular as it should be, and I summoned the doctor immediately.  Her condition grew rapidly worse, and a second physician was called; but it was not in human skill to save her.  At eleven o’clock that night she was taken from us.

It is needless to dwell here upon the agony of that first dark time through which we passed.  That such a blow could leave loveliness in its path, and add a touch of beauty to our dwelling place, seemed unbelievable at the time.  Yet to-day our first baby still lives with us, as wonderful as she was in those glad thirteen months.  She has not grown older, as have we, but smiles that same sweet baby smile of hers upon us as of old.  We can talk of her now bravely and proudly; and we have come to understand that it was a privilege to have had her, even for those brief thirteen months.

To have joys in common is the dream of man and wife.  We had supposed that love was based on mutual happiness.  And Mother and I had been happy together; we had been walking arm in arm under blue skies, and we knew how much we meant to each other.  But just how much we needed each other neither of us really knew—­until we had to share a common sorrow.

To be partners in a sacred memory is a divine bond.  To be partners in a little mound, in one of God’s silent gardens, is the closest relationship which man and woman can know on this earth.  Our lives had been happy before; now they had been made beautiful.

So it was with the home.  It began to mean more to us, as we began each to mean more to the other.  The bedroom in which our baby fell asleep seemed glorified.  Of course there were the lonely days and weeks and months when everything we touched or saw brought back the memory of her.  I came home many an evening to find on Mother’s face the mark of tears; and I knew she had been living over by herself the sorrow of it all.

I learned how much braver the woman has to be than the man.  I could go into town, where there was the contagion of good cheer; and where my work absorbed my thoughts and helped to shut out grief.  But not so with Mother!  She must live day by day and hour by hour amid the scenes of her anguish.  No matter where she turned, something reminded her of the joy we had known and lost.  Even the striking clock called back to her mind the hour when something should have been done for the baby.