oo. 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 th