hioned
cradle, giving emphasis to its utterances by throwing down a rattle that
cost seven dollars, and kicking off a shoe imported at fabulous expense,
and upsetting the "baby-basket," with all its treasures of ivory hair
brushes and "Meen Fun." Not with voice, but by violence of gesture and
kicks and squirms, it says: "What! You going to put me in that old cradle?
Where is the nurse? My patience! What does mother mean? Get me a 'patented
self-rocker!'"

The parents yield. In comes the new-fangled crib. The machine is wound up,
the baby put in, the crib set in motion, and mother goes off to make a
first-rate speech at the "Woman's Rights Convention!"

Conundrum: Why is a maternal elocutionist of this sort like a mother of old
time, who trained four sons for the holy ministry, and through them was the
means of reforming and saving a thousand souls, and through that thousand
of saving ten thousand more? You answer: "No resemblance at all!" You are
right. Guessed the conundrum the first time. Go up to the head of the
class!

Now, the "patented self-rockers," no doubt, have their proper use; but go
up with me into the garret of your old homestead, and exhume the cradle
that you, a good while ago, slept in. The rockers are somewhat rough, as
though a farmer's plane had fashioned them, and the sides just high enough
for a child to learn to walk by. What a homely thing, take it all in all!
You say: Stop your depreciation! We were all rocked in that. For about
fifteen years that cradle was going much of the time. When the older child
was taken out, a smaller child was put in. The crackle of the rockers is
pleasant yet in my ears. There I took my first lessons in music as mother
sang to me. Have heard what you would call far better singing since then,
but none that so thoroughly touched me. She never got five hundred dollars
per night for singing three songs at the Academy, with two or three encores
grudgefully thrown in; but without pay she sometimes sang all night, and
came out whenever encored, though she had only two little ears for an
audience. It was a low, subdued tone that sings to me yet across
thirty-five years.

You see the edge of that rocker worn quite deep? That is where her foot was
placed while she sat with her knitting or sewing, on summer afternoons,
while the bees hummed at the door and the shout of the boy at the oxen was
heard afield. From the way the rocker is worn, I think that sometimes the
foot must