rd everybody! What a
holiness and sanctity of love grows upon your old devotion to that wife
of your bosom--the mother of your child!

The excess of joy seems almost to blur the stories of happiness which
attach to heaven. You are now joined, as you were never joined before,
to the great family of man. Your name and blood will live after you; nor
do you once think (what father can?) but that it will live honorably and
well.

With what a new air you walk the streets! With what a triumph you speak,
in your letter to Nelly, of "your family!" Who, that has not felt it,
knows what it is to be "a man of family!"

How weak now seem all the imaginations of your single life; what bare,
dry skeletons of the reality they furnished! You pity the poor fellows
who have no wives or children--from your soul; you count their smiles as
empty smiles, put on to cover the lack that is in them. There is a
freemasonry among fathers that they know nothing of. You compassionate
them deeply; you think them worthy objects of some charitable
association; you would cheerfully buy tracts for them, if they would but
read them,--tracts on marriage and children.

----And then "the boy,"--_such_ a boy!

There was a time when you thought all babies very much alike;--alike? Is
your boy like anything, except the wonderful fellow that he is? Was
there ever a baby seen, or even read of, like that baby!

----Look at him: pick him up in his long, white gown: he may have an
excess of color,--but such a pretty color! he is a little pouty about
the mouth,--but such a mouth! His hair is a little scant, and he is
rather wandering in the eye,--but, Good Heavens, what an eye!

There was a time when you thought it very absurd for fathers to talk
about their children; but it does not seem at all absurd now. You think,
on the contrary, that your old friends, who used to sup with you at the
club, would be delighted to know how your baby is getting on, and how
much he measures around the calf of the leg! If they pay you a visit,
you are quite sure they are in an agony to see Frank; and you hold the
little squirming fellow in your arms, half conscience-smitten for
provoking them to such envy as they must be suffering. You make a
settlement upon the boy with a chuckle,--as if you were treating
yourself to a mint-julep, instead of conveying away a few thousands of
seven per cents.

----Then the boy develops astonishingly. What a head,--what a
foot,--what a voice! A