the batteries, and advanced with steady tread; but
when he turned on the terrors of his war-whoop you
advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of
the chance, too. When he called for soothing-syrup,
did you venture to throw out any side remarks about
certain services being unbecoming an officer and a
gentleman? No. You got up and got it.
When he ordered his pap-bottle and it was not warm,
did you talk back? Not you. You went to
work and warmed it. You even descended so far
in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm,
insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right—three
parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify
the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those
hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff yet.
And how many things you learned as you went along!
Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful
old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep,
it is because the angels are whispering to him.
Very pretty, but too thin—simply wind on
the stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed
to take a walk at his usual hour, two o’clock
in the morning, didn’t you rise up promptly and
remark, with a mental addition which would not improve
a Sunday-school book much, that that was the very
thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh!
you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering
up and down the room in your undress uniform, you
not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even
tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing!
—“Rock-a-by baby in the treetop,”
for instance. What a spectacle for an Army of
the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the
neighbors, too; for it is not everybody within a mile
around that likes military music at three in the morning.
And when you had been keeping this sort of thing
up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head
intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and
noise, what did you do? ["Go on!”] You simply
went on until you dropped in the last ditch.
The idea that a baby doesn’t amount to anything!
Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full
by itself. One baby can furnish more business
than you and your whole Interior Department can attend
to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful
of lawless activities. Do what you please, you
can’t make him stay on the reservation.
Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long
as you are in your right mind don’t you ever
pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent
riot. And there ain’t any real difference
between triplets and an insurrection.
Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty years from now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republic numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our increase. Our present schooner of State will have grown into a political leviathan—a Great Eastern.