Mr. and Mrs. Fogg have a young baby which was exceedingly restless and troublesome at night while it was cutting its teeth.  Mr. Fogg, devoted and faithful father that he is, used to take a good deal more than his share of the nursing of the infant, and often, when he would turn out of bed for the fifteenth or sixteenth time and with fluttering garments and unshod feet carry the baby to and fro, soothing it with a little song, he would think how true it is, as Napoleon once said, that “the only real courage is two-o’clock-in-the-morning courage.”  Mr. Fogg thought he had a reasonable amount of genuine bravery, and justly, for he performed the functions of a nurse with unsurpassed patience and good humor.

One night, however, the baby was unusually wakeful and tempestuous, and after struggling with it for several hours he called Mrs. Fogg and suggested that it would be well to give the child some paregoric to relieve it from the intense pain from which it was evidently suffering.  The medicine stood upon the bureau, but Mrs. Fogg had to go down stairs to the dining-room to get some sugar; and while she was fumbling about in the entry in the dark it occurred to Mr. Fogg that he had heard of persons being relieved from pain by applications of mesmerism.  He had no notion that he could exercise such power; but while musing upon the subject he rubbed the baby’s eyebrows carelessly with his fingers and made several passes with his hands upon its forehead.  As Mrs. Fogg began to feel her way up stairs, he was surprised and pleased to find that the baby had become quiet and had dropped off into sweet and peaceful slumber.  Mrs. Fogg put the sugar away as her husband placed the child in its crib and covered it up carefully, and then they went to bed.

[Illustration:  Mr. Fogg as A mesmerist]

They were not disturbed again that night, and in the morning the baby was still fast asleep.  Mrs. Fogg said she guessed the poor little darling must have gotten a tooth through, which made it feel easier.  Mr. Fogg said, “Maybe it has.”

But he had a faint though very dark suspicion that something was wrong.

After breakfast he went up to the bed-room to see if the baby was awake.  It still remained asleep; and Mr. Fogg, when he had leaned over and listened to its breathing, shook it roughly three or four times and cleared his throat in a somewhat boisterous manner.  But it did not wake, and Mr. Fogg went down stairs with a horrible dread upon him, and assuming his hat prepared to go to the office.  Mrs. Fogg called to him,

“Don’t slam the front door and wake the baby!”

And then Mr. Fogg did slam it with extraordinary violence; after which he walked up the street with gloom in his soul and a wretched feeling of apprehension that the baby would never waken.

“What on earth would we do if it should stay asleep for years?  S’pose’n it should sleep right straight ahead for half a century, and grow to be an old man without knowing its pa and ma, and without ever learning anything or seeing anything!”