CHRISTMAS HOLLY

                            [Illustration]




                  [Illustration: THE CHRISTMAS HOLLY]

                                  BY

                            MARION HARLAND

                               New York:

                      _SHELDON & Co., PUBLISHERS,
                         498 & 500 BROADWAY._

                                 1867.


      _Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
                            SHELDON & Co.,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the
                    Southern District of New York._


          _Stereotyped by_ SMITH & MCDOUGAL, _84 Beckman St._




                              SALUTATORY.


On a Christmas Eve, many years ago, before I had learned to accept Life
as it is,--as it must ever be while Man needs the discipline of
reverses, and while the ways of God are known but to Himself,--a
checquered scene, always; often grey and lowering; sometimes black with
midnight and chill with storm--on a certain Christmas Eve, then, when I
was young, unreasonable and rebellious, I took a long, lonely walk into
the country. The afternoon suited my temper, and both were gloomy. Low
heavens of clouded steel that yet seemed, now and then, to shiver with
the still, biting air, and with each shudder, to let down a few
wandering flakes of snow; a bleak landscape of commons, blasted by
invisible frost; of sterile hills, that must have been stony and bare in
the sunniest springtime,--and for a horizon, a girdle of leafless woods,
stretching up motionless boughs against the pitiless sky; in the hollow
formed by the amphitheatre of hills, an artificial pond--too intensely
tame in form and surroundings to deserve the name of lake, or be
mistaken for aught but what it was, viz., a pool dug and filled with a
single eye to the production of ice for the next summer’s use,--this was
the picture that greeted my outlooking sight. Within was the dull, icy
calm of stoical misanthropy; distrust of my fellows, which stubbornly
refused to ask of heavenly wisdom the solution of the human enigma that
had baffled, in disgusting me.

Into the midst of this sunless mood came a surprise Right before me, in
my steady but aimless track across the waste, was a clump of dwarf
trees, poor, puny things that must have had a hard coming-up. I
marvelled, in surveying them, that the germs from which they had
struggled had had the courage to sprout in such a barren spot. In the
centre of the coppice, head and shoulders above his fellows, arose a
holly sapling, brave with leaves of glossy green and scarlet berries.
The only smile in the drear expanse, it was in itself a whole fountain
of cheer. The soil about the trunk might be frozen to stone-like
hardness, but below, the great heart of Mother Earth pulsed warmly
still; throwing up, at each beat, sap into the hardy frame of her
winter-child; strength to the lusty limbs; verdure to the spiky leaves;
blushes to the coral beads. And while I looked, a bevy of brown-coated
plump-breasted snow-birds whirled noisily across the plain, and
alighted, with much twittering and a deal of happy, useless fluttering,
among the inviting branches.

I had conned my lesson, and I turned my face homewards with changed
spirits and a changed purpose. As one measure towards the fulfilment of
the latter, I send this Christmas greeting into the waste we know as the
common life of this working-day world. We make it too common, dear
reader. We choose for ourselves a path across a dead level, and then
perversely adapt our feelings to what we are pleased to call our
circumstances. I pray you, for this one holiday season, learn with me of
my holly-tree. Seek out present brightness, and in it read the promise
of happy days to come. Sigh not that

   --“All hope of Spring-time
    Has perished with the year,”

while the same Love that nourishes the tiny greenling of the forest into
brightness and beauty, despite wintry blast and wintry sleet, will keep
alive in your heart, if not the tender shoots of youthful joys, the
stronger, braver, worthier growth of love for your brother man; helpful
charity for all things weak and lowly and sorrowing; hope and faith in
the wise and tender Father of us all.

                                                        MARION HARLAND.




                           Nettie’s Prayer.




                            Netties Prayer.


Mrs. Dryden was cross!

She would have been at a loss to specify what especial grounds she had
for the discontent that possessed her on this particular night. If
interrogated, she would probably have returned an evasive reply to the
effect that it was none of the questioner’s business how she felt or
looked, so long as she did not obtrude her unhappiness upon other
people. Everybody had his and her own troubles with which others had no
right to intermeddle. She was responsible to no one for her behavior;
nobody should hinder her from being low-spirited, if she pleased to be
so. She was out of humor with the whole world, herself included. The
children were troublesome; the servants heedless; her husband
indifferent to her grievances--and it was Christmas eve.

“Really,” she said, peevishly, at tea-time, “one would suppose that
Christmas came but once in a century, instead of once a year! Everybody
is as crazy to-night as if there were never to be another 25th of
December.”

“By the way,” said her husband, looking up from his paper, “I suppose
you have baked some mince-pies and fried some dough-nuts--haven’t you?”

“I have mince-pies and turkey for to-morrow!” was the curt reply. “I
knew you would not be satisfied unless you had as good a dinner as your
neighbors. But as for dough-nuts--they are oily, rank, indigestible
abominations, fit only for an ostrich’s stomach, and one doesn’t get the
smell of the hot fat out of the house in two weeks after they have been
cooked. I never mean to make another while I live.”

Two pairs of sorrowful eyes stole a glance of mutual pity at one
another, when this announcement was made; two pairs of cherry lips took
a piteous curl, for a second; two curly heads bent lower over the plates
set before their owners.

Not that there was any dearth of sweet things in the Dryden larder, or
that Ally and Nettie, the proprietors of the eyes, lips, and heads
aforesaid, were gormandizers. But this matter of frying doughnuts was
great fun to them, as it is to most other small people who have ever
been permitted to stand by and see the rings, leaves, birds, circles,
triangles, and the endless variety of nondescript figures leave the
kneading-board pale, flat surfaces of soft dough, and, upon being thrown
into the bubbling fat, sinking, like leaden shapes, with a tremendous
splutter and “fizz,” arise slowly and majestically to the top of the
caldron, as Mr. Weller has it, “swelling wisibly” before the enraptured
eye into puffy, crisp, toothsome morsels, fit, in the estimation of the
juvenile partakers thereof, for a queen’s luncheon. Last year, the
brother and sister had spent Christmas week with an aunt in another
town. This lady being the indulgent mamma of half a dozen boys and
girls, enjoyed nothing so much as making them merry and happy. The six
days passed in her abode lived in the memory of nephew and niece as a
dream of Paradisaical delight. But, this season, the holidays were to be
kept at home, and the prospect was, to say the least, not eminently
flattering.

Mr. and Mrs. Dryden were estimable people in their way, but they had
studied to render themselves intensely and purely matter-of-fact. They
prided themselves secretly upon growing wiser and more practical--less
poetical--each revolving cycle. Each year, life assumed a more positive
and less romantic aspect; their own duties seemed more momentous and
imperative; the things which others call recreation and innocent
amusements were puerile and unworthy. Mr. Dryden was making money; Mrs.
Dryden was a notable housekeeper, and, so far as the physical needs of
the children were concerned, a careful mother. Four little ones, three
boys and a girl, claimed her love and maternal offices. Allison, the
eldest, was eight years old; Nettie, six; and a pair of twin babies were
in their third winter. The mother’s hands were certainly full, however
admirable might be her faculty of accomplishing with speed the work set
for her to do. It was not surprising that she should sometimes wear a
haggard, anxious look, or that, now and then, she should be, as she now
expressed it, “worried out of her senses.”

“I don’t see, for my part,” she broke forth, impatiently, presently,
“how people find time or have the heart to frolic and observe holidays
and the like frivolous carryings-on! With me, it is work, work, work!
from morning until night, and from one year’s end to another. It frets
me to see grown-up men and women, who ought to know something about the
cares and solemn responsibilities of life, acting like silly children.
What is Christmas more than any other time--when one takes a sober,
common-sense view of the matter?”

“That is what nobody does in this age of nonsense and dissipation,”
returned her husband. “I don’t know what the world is coming to!”

“Wasn’t our Saviour born on Christmas-day, Mamma?” asked Nettie’s timid
voice.

“That is not certain, by any means, child. And if it were true, there is
all the more scandal in making a frolic of it. If there were to be
prayer-meetings held all over the world to celebrate the event, it would
be far more appropriate.”

The polysyllable staggered Nettie a little, but she retained sufficient
courage to reply: “Our teacher told us, last Sabbath, that everybody
ought to be very happy upon the Saviour’s birthday.”

Before Mrs. Dryden could answer, Ally put in his oar.

“Mamma! why doesn’t Santa Claus ever come down our chimney?”

“There is no such creature, Allison! You are too old to believe in that
ridiculous fable.”

“But, Mamma, he came to Aunt Mary’s last year!” cried both children, in
a breath.

“And we all hung up our stockings in the parlor!” added Nettie.

“And Aunt Mary let the fire go down on purpose, so that the old chap
might not be scorched!” shouted Ally, excitedly. “We wanted her to have
the chimney swept, but she said he wouldn’t mind a little dirt.”

“For you know--

    ‘His clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot!’”

quoted Nettie, “and yet he was in a good humor

   --‘and filled all the stockings’”--

            “‘Then turned with a jerk,
    And laying his finger alongside his nose,
    And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!’”

chanted Ally. “Oh! what times we had repeating that, after we went to
bed that night.

    ‘His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
     And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.
     He had a broad face and a little round--’”

“You children will be the death of me!” cried Mrs. Dryden, distractedly,
putting her hands to her ears. “I shall certainly never let you spend
another Christmas at your Aunt Mary’s! Your heads were so crammed with
nonsense last year, that I am afraid you will never get rid of it.
Finish your suppers and be off to bed! You are as Christmas-mad as if
you had never been trained to more sensible things!”

“I can not imagine,” said Mr. Dryden, severely, “how they have contrived
to remember the senseless doggerel your sister was so injudicious as to
teach them.”

“That is the depravity of human nature!” sighed the wife.

Very sober little faces were uplifted to father and mother for a
“good-night” kiss, and very slow footsteps went up the stairs to the
chamber which the brother and sister shared in common. There was a
pathos in the sound, so unlike was it to the brisk patter of other small
feet upon other floors and staircases on that jubilee eve.

The father, albeit he was not an imaginative man, noticed this, and went
off to the parlor with a pained and yearning heart--saddened, he knew
not by what--longing for something he could not name. The children had
interrupted his evening reading, at supper, by their chatter, and he
bestowed himself in his armchair by the centre-table, to finish the
perusal of his newspaper. His seat was comfortable; the light clear and
soft; the evening news interesting; the room still; yet he could not fix
his mind upon his occupation. Through the quiet apartment came and went
the echoes of the four little feet, in slow dejection, going on up to
the repose that was to be visited by no happy dreams of the glories of
Christmas morning. He saw, between him and the printed column, the
sadly-serious countenances, that were, by this time, laid upon their
pillows. He wondered if the pair would cry themselves to sleep. He
purposely waxed angry with his sister-in-law for putting these silly
notions into the children’s heads. They were contented enough until that
unfortunate visit. Now, there was no telling where this mischief would
stop. It was too provoking to have two such fine natures soured by
repinings and foolish longings; two minds so intelligent filled with
superstitious fancies. Yes! they were fine children! if he _did_ say
it--and dutiful as handsome and intelligent. His wife had an excellent
method of discipline, and deserved much credit for her success in
training her offspring. She was a good woman--industrious and
conscientious--but he could have wished that her spirits were more
equable. He did not relish the idea that his blooming Nettie might, one
day, become a toil-worn, pains-taking wife and mother; her smooth
forehead be ploughed in two deep furrows, like those that crossed her
mother’s, from temple to temple; her pouting lips grow colorless and
drawn down at the corners; her bird-like voice sharpen into the shrill
peevishness of the tones that had ordered the bairns off to bed. He
would like to keep life fresh and bright for his darling so long as he
could. She would find out, soon enough, what a dry, dusty, detestable
cheat the world was. If he might have his wish, she should be a child
always; a merry, laughing, singing fairy, to gladden his old age; a
simple-hearted, trusting child, in whose love and purity he could find
refreshment, when disheartened by the faithlessness of his fellow-men.
She was very fond of him--grave and undemonstrative as he was. With the
unerring perception of childhood, she had discovered that she was his
favorite, and repaid his partiality in the coin he liked best. The sound
of his latch-key in the door was the signal, noon and night, for her to
bound down stairs to meet him; to kiss him, and offer, in her pretty,
womanly way, to relieve him of his overcoat; to hang up his hat and
bring him his slippers. Such nimble feet as hers were! Blithe, willing
little feet, how they twinkled to and fro, to perform whatever errands
he would suffer her to undertake for his comfort! Merry, dancing little
feet!

But the echoes persisted in contradicting his recollection of their
lively music. Up and down--sad and slow--they wandered; never drowned
for a moment, while their monotonous beat was rendered more mournful by
the hurried, ceaseless tramp of pleasure-seekers upon the pavement
without. He wished that he had spoken a kindly word to the downcast
innocents, instead of the silent salute he had vouchsafed to their
mutely-offered lips. Perhaps they were not asleep yet! His wife was
still with the twins, in the bedroom overhead, for he heard her walking
about the floor, preparing, as he knew, to leave them for the night. He
could slip up noiselessly to the small chamber adjoining, and solace his
uneasy spirit by a loving “good-night,” that should dry Nettie’s eyes,
if they were wet, and comfort Ally’s disappointed soul, while the
partner of his bosom would be none the wiser for it.

Mrs. Dryden did not allow the attendance of a nursery-maid to her elder
children in the evening. For more than a year they had undressed
themselves and retired to their respective cots, without noise or
complaint, leaving nothing for mother or servant to do, but to look in,
a few minutes later, and extinguish the gas. This had been done by
Ellen, the chamber-maid, before she went down to her own tea; but the
moonlight, streaming through the window-curtain, showed to the father,
as he stood without the partly-open door, the two white beds in opposite
corners of the room, and the forms that ought to have been snugly laid
under the blankets. Instead of this, they were raised upon their elbows
to a half-sitting posture, and the low hum of their earnest voices
arrested the spectator upon the threshold.

“I wonder if Papa and Mamma ever were a little boy and girl!” said
Master Ally, in a doleful key. “If they were, I guess they have
forgotten how they used to feel. I could have cried right out, to-day,
at school, when the boys were all talking about Christmas gifts and what
they expected to get. You ought to have seen them stare at me when they
asked me what I thought I should have, and I said that we didn’t keep
Christmas at our house, and that I had never hung up my stockings but
once, and that was when I was at my aunt’s! And one boy asked me if my
father and mother were dead. And when I said ‘No,’ another fellow called
out, as rude as could be--‘I guess they don’t care much about you!’ I
tell you, Nettie, it makes a fellow feel real bad!”

“I know it!” said the miniature woman, tenderly. “But, Ally, dear, Papa
and Mamma _do_ love us! Only they don’t know how much we think of
Christmas, and how children love to hang up their stockings, and all
that. But that was a very naughty boy that told you they didn’t care for
you. Papa works _ever_ so hard to get clothes and food for us, so Mamma
says; and Mamma sews for us, and takes care of us when we are sick,
and--and--a great many other kind things.”

“Maybe so; but she was awful cross to-night, and scolded like every
thing, just for nothing at all, and I am very miserable! Just hear the
boys shouting out-doors, and the people laughing and talking, as they go
along! It’s downright mean in them, when they might know that there
isn’t to be any Christmas in our house. I wish they would be still! I
wish I was dead!”

“Ally, Ally, that is wicked!” expostulated the gentle tones of the
sister.

“I don’t care! where is the sense of living, if a fellow is never to
have any fun? Where is the use of being good? If I was the wickedest boy
in town, I could not be treated worse than I am now. How I hate this
stupid old house! When I am a man, and have boys and girls of my own, I
mean that Santa Claus shall come every week and bring them--oh, such
lots of nice things! and you shall live with me, Nettie, and we will fry
doughnuts and have New Year’s cake every day!”

“Ally!” said Nettie, thoughtfully, “do you suppose there is such a man
as Santa Claus? Mamma says there isn’t!”

“I _know_ there is!” returned the boy, confidently. “But he doesn’t come
to a house unless the father and mother of the children that live there
send him an invitation. One of the big boys told me so, to-day. And good
fathers and mothers always tell him what to bring.”

“I was just thinking,” resumed Nettie’s liquid treble, “if Our Heavenly
Father knew how very badly we wanted to have a Christmas, whether He
wouldn’t send him to us. Suppose I pray to Him and tell Him all about
it!”

“You may try it!” was the conclusion of the embryo skeptic. “But I don’t
believe it will do any good.”

In a trice, Nettie had slipped to the floor, and was fumbling among a
heap of clothes laid upon a chair. Mr. Dryden watched her curiously.

“Now, Ally!” he heard her say, presently, “Here are the clean stockings
that Ellen got out for us to put on to-morrow. Mamma wouldn’t like it if
we hung them up ourselves, so I will just lay them on the foot of the
bed. If Santa Claus should come, maybe he can pin them up for us.”

Then, sinking to her knees, she put her hands together and raised her
pure face--angelic in the father’s sight--as the moonbeams revealed its
expression of meek devotion.

“Our Father who art in Heaven! please make us good and happy, and let us
have a merry Christmas. If there is any Santa Claus, please let him come
to our house to-night, for he has never been here in all our lives, and
this makes us very sorry. Bless dear Papa and Mamma, and don’t let us
think hard of them, or say naughty things about them, only because they
don’t know how little children feel. Amen!”

Ally gave a grunt that might mean acquiescence, or doubt, when his
sister arose and leaned over to kiss him; but Mr. Dryden could play the
eavesdropper no longer.

Feeling that he must inevitably discover himself if he remained another
minute in his present position, he hurried down-stairs and into the
parlor, where he behaved more like a crazy man than the sober,
self-possessed head of a staid and decent household. Kicking off his
slippers, he thrust his feet violently into

[Illustration]

his boots, stamping, with unnecessary force, to get these fairly on;
blew his nose repeatedly and loudly, afterwards passing his handkerchief
over his eyes, as though the sudden catarrh from which he appeared to be
suffering had affected them also. Going into the hall, he snatched his
greatcoat from the rack and put it on--still in desperate haste, pulled
his hat over his brows, and rushed into the street.

He found himself plunged directly into a rapid, buzzing crowd. Every
step was quick and light; every face wore a smile, and the air was full
of the pleasant confusion of happy voices. Bless the children! how they
ran under his feet, and trod upon his toes, and kicked against his
heels, and jostled him on the right and on the left! And not one of them
was empty-handed. Parcels of all sizes, shapes, and descriptions, filled
small fingers; were hugged by small arms; laid upon small shoulders and
slung upon small backs. Brown paper bundles; bundles tied in frailer
white paper, which, bursting, showed the wheel of a toy-wagon, or the
head of a toy-horse, or the arm of a doll; funnel-shaped bundles, fresh
from the hands of the confectioner; bundles, wrapped hastily in
newspaper by an economical shopkeeper, or one whose stock of wrapping
material had proved inadequate to the rush of custom; boxes, square,
oblong, and many-sided; mimic guns and drums, with gayly-painted sides,
upon whose heads the delighted owners could not refrain from beating
stirring Christmas marches, as they carried them home; here and there a
huge hobby-horse, with dilated eye and streaming mane, borne aloft by
the stalwart porter of some toy warehouse; these were but a few features
in the pageant that streamed past Mr. Dryden--a varied and joyous
torrent of life. He caught the infection of this atmosphere of gladness
before he had gone a dozen yards. He had come forth with the intention
of purchasing something with which to make his children happy; to answer
Nettie’s prayer so far as lay in his power. Awakened conscience and
remorseful affection for those he felt he had wronged, had driven him on
to the duty of making restitution. He soon began to understand that
there might be enjoyment, active and new, in the task.

“How I wish I had brought them with me!” he said to himself, as he felt
his features relax into a smile at sight of the general hilarity. “It
was hard to send them to bed so early on Christmas eve. But, what would
their mother have said if I had asked her permission to take them out
after dark?”

He stayed his rapid progress, as another query presented itself. What
would this very prudent and sedate help-meet say and think of another
bold innovation upon established rules, to wit, this expedition and its
probable results? How should he meet the stare of mingled astonishment
and rebuke that would rest upon his freight of “useless” playthings,
upon his return home? She disapproved of toys, except when great
moderation was displayed in their bestowal. Nettie had but one doll in
the world, and, careful as she was of this treasure, her loving arts
could not conceal the ravages of time; said manikin having been Aunt
Mary’s gift to her niece, upon her third birthday. Ally had never owned
a hobby-horse. His mother had a dread of “rough plays.” Our hero was
quite aware that on this occasion he was not inclined to moderation. He
would cheerfully have bought the entire contents of any one of the
illuminated windows whose splendors drew around them a swarm of admiring
juveniles, as a hive of honey would tempt hungry bees. The difficulty
was to know what would best please the unsuspecting twain at home.

“This sort of thing is not in my line!” he soliloquized. “I suppose
there is a difference between girls’ and boys’ playthings. I have it!
These people ought to know their business! I will state my dilemma, and
take whatever they advise.”

Thus resolving, he entered the largest and most brilliant toy emporium
he had yet seen, and making his way, with considerable labor, through
the throng of eager buyers, presented himself at the counter. Luckily,
the saleswoman nearest him had just dismissed a customer, and turned to
him with an engaging smile. She looked tired--as well she might, poor
thing! having been on her feet for twelve hours, and hard at work all
the time--but it was not in a kind-hearted tradeswoman’s nature to be
cross on Christmas eve.

“What can I show you, sir?” she asked, politely.

“That is what you must tell _me_, madam! I want some toys for my little
girl, aged six, and my boy, who is two years older. If you can inform me
what will suit them, you will oblige me, and please them.”

His fluent, pleasant speech amazed himself. Certainly, the witchery of
the festal eve was working upon him fast.

“Has your daughter a tea or dinner set?” inquired the shop-woman, taking
down two wooden boxes; pulling back the sliding tops, and rummaging
among the shred paper used for packing the fragile contents. “Here is
something very handsome.”

“Just the thing!” ejaculated the father, upon beholding the wee tureen;
covered and shallow dishes, gravy-boat, saltcellars, casters, and a
dozen plates, white, with a rim of gold; all so graceful in design, so
dainty in material, as to elicit his unqualified admiration. Already he
saw, in imagination, Nettie’s eyes glisten at sight of them; her deft
fingers arranging them--cunning little housewife that she was.

“Then you don’t care for the tea-set?” making a movement to close the
box.

“I--don’t--know!” hesitatingly. “I suppose she will want to spread a
supper and breakfast table, as well as play dinner, won’t she?”

“If she has not cups and saucers already, I would certainly recommend
you to take these,” and the artful tempter made a tea-tray of the lid of
the case, setting out the service so attractively, that her
inexperienced customer speedily regarded the second array of china as a
“must have.”

“Now, perhaps, you will look at a table!” pursued the woman, leading the
way to the back of the store. “We have a novelty in that line--an
extension-table.”

“Of course! how stupid in me not to remember that the china would be
useless unless she had something upon which to arrange it!”

Mr. Dryden had entered thoroughly into the spirit of the enterprise, and
was highly diverted at his oversight; very grateful to her who had
corrected his blunder. The table was a neat affair, with turned legs and
polished top, and constructed, as had been said, upon the extension
principle. Mr. Dryden took it on the spot.

“Chairs?” he said, interrogatively.

It was now the lady’s turn to be ashamed of _her_ forgetfulness. Half a
dozen cane-seat chairs were added to the pile, which betokened Mr.
Dryden to be a valuable customer. Then followed a case of knives, a
knife-box, and an assortment of silver (?) ware, and both parties came
to a momentary halt. The gentleman recovered himself first.

“Now, a doll--for which she can keep house!”

“Wax finish, porcelain, biscuit, or rubber?” said the other, glibly.
“Dressed, or undressed?”

“Dressed--I suppose, since to-morrow is so near. As to the rest, I am no
judge. But I want the prettiest doll in the establishment.”

His experience in this species of merchandise was so limited that he
might well be excused for starting at the wonderfully life-like lady
paraded for his inspection. Her hair waved in natural ringlets; she
rolled her eyes, as the shopwoman moved her to and fro. She was dressed
in the height of the mode--neither gloves, nor hat, nor parasol being
wanting to complete her toilet; and when, in obedience to a dexterous
pull of a wire upon her left side, she squeaked “Mamma!” and, responding
to a similar twitch of the corresponding muscle under the right arm, she
cried “Papa!” Mr. Dryden was overwhelmed.

“What _will_ toy makers do next?” he articulated.

“The art of manufacturing dolls is carried to great perfection,” quietly
replied the woman. “Did you say that you would take this, sir?”

Take it! what could have bribed him to forego the treat of witnessing
Nettie’s rapture in the survey of this resplendent and accomplished
demoiselle?

“We have some very pretty doll-carriages, in which the lady can take the
air,” was the next attack, and Mr. Dryden fell a willing sacrifice to
this new snare.

In very compassion for her victim, the woman directed his thoughts to
the boy’s gifts. A velocipede; a wheelbarrow, with spade, rake, and hoe;
a set of jackstraws, for winter evenings; a football and a sled made up
the complement that was to transport the semi-infidel to the seventh
heaven of ecstacy.

Truth obliges me to mention that the lavish parent sustained a slight
shock when the obliging saleswoman figured up and presented the amount
of his indebtedness; but he rallied bravely.

“Christmas comes but once a year!” he said, manfully, and paid his bill
with a good grace.

“You could not purchase the same quantity of happiness so cheaply in any
other manner,” remarked the bland merchant, oracularly.

The tit-bit of wisdom was assuredly not original with her, but it
impressed the hearer as a profound and truthful observation--one well
worth remembering. He was getting on very swiftly, indeed, in the
acquisition of Christmas lore.

“You have but two children, then, sir?” remarked the lady, casually, in
handing him his change.

“Bless my life! I forgot the twins!” exclaimed the father, aghast. “But
I suppose they are too young to appreciate Christmas presents.”

“What age?” queried the other, sweetly.

“Two and a half.”

“My dear sir! they would be disconsolate if they were overlooked!
Children understand these matters astonishingly soon.”

And having ascertained the sex of the twins, she selected two rubber
balls, and two sets of building blocks for their delectation.

“Our porter will take them for you,” she said, amused at Mr. Dryden’s
amazed contemplation of the dimensions of the pyramid she constructed of
his purchases. “Please favor us with your address!”

“Really, a little more practice will render me an adept in toy
shopping!” thought Mr. Dryden, complacently, when he was beyond the
enchanted ground, the seductions of which had lightened both heart and
pocket. “It is not a disagreeable or difficult operation, after all.”

As he neared his own door on his return, his pockets crammed with
conical packages of sugar-plums, nuts, and crystallized fruits, he
overtook the porter with his barrow.

“Quietly, my man!” he said, inserting his latch-key in the lock with
secret trepidation of spirit. “It would never do to awaken the children.
Or to attract my wife’s attention,” he added, inly.

The porter’s load was transferred to the hall so silently that even Mrs.
Dryden’s cat-like ears did not hear any bustle. Mr. Dryden sent the man
off with a gratuity, and proceeded to dispose of the presents in the
following style: the table bestraddled the right arm, and upon it were
the boxes of crockery, surmounted by the chairs; the case of jackstraws
and several other light articles. The velocipede was borne in like
manner upon the left coat sleeve; then came the wheelbarrow; the boxes
of building-blocks, the balls, and on the top, held firmly in its place
by Mr. Dryden’s chin, was the doll, In the right hand he carried the
sled; in the other Dolly’s carriage. This staid, prosaic
_pater-familias_ would have made no bad representation of the patron
saint of the anniversary, the suggestion of whose existence he had
scouted, a few hours previously, as he slowly ascended the stairs on
tiptoe, his face radiant with arch delight, despite the cowardly fear
tugging at his heart-strings, as to the reception in store for him at
the hands of his better half. Treading yet more delicately, in passing
his sleeping-room, wherein, he had no doubt, Mrs. Dryden was soundly
reposing, it being ten o’clock, her invariable bedtime, he pushed open
the door of the smaller chamber beyond, and entered. The gas was
burning--not brightly--but it enabled him to see with terrible
distinctness the figure that started up in the aisle between the beds
and confronted him with an excited air. It was his wife!

Dropping the curtain upon a tableau which the reader can picture to
himself better than I can describe, we will take a step or two backward
in our story.

“And it’s sorry for the children I am, this blessed night!” said Ellen,
to the cook, over their dish of tea. “Sorra a bit of a merry-making will
they have to-morrow--and they such good, peaceful little things, too! I
was asking Miss Nettie, just now, if I shouldn’t hang up her stockings,
at a venture-like; ‘for,’ sez I, ‘there’s no knowing but the saint might
pop down the chimney, unbeknownst to you, and ’twould be a pity not to
be ready for him.’ For, you see, my heart was that tinder towards the
lonesome craturs, that I thought I would step out myself, presently, and
buy some candies and apples to put into their poor, empty, desolate
little stockings. But, ‘No,’ says she, kinder pitiful, ‘I am afraid
Mamma might not like it, Ellen. She doesn’t believe in keeping
Christmas.’ And wid that she give a sigh, like a sorrowful woman, and
Master Ally growled over something cross to himself.”

“It’s ra’al hard--that’s what it is!” responded Biddy. “They begged
their Mamma, to-day, to let me fry some doughnuts--‘Just this once,
Mamma,’ says they, ‘because to-morrow’s Christmas’--and she wouldn’t
hear a word to it. Ah! no good ever came of ch’ating childer out of the
fun the Lord meant they should have.”

“There’s the parlor bell!” said Ellen, jumping up. “What’s wanted now, I
wonder?”

Her mistress stood upon the rug before the fire in the parlor, hat and
cloak on.

“Ellen, if you have finished your supper, I want you to get your bonnet
and shawl and go out with me. Take a basket along. I am going to buy
some things for the children.”

Her voice shook in uttering these few sentences; and, although her face
was averted, the girl was positive that she had been weeping. Brimful of
curiosity and excitement, she dashed up-stairs for her wrappings, then
down to the kitchen to ask Biddy to listen for sounds from the nursery
while she was out.

“For we are going a-Christmassing--glory be to all the saints--St.
Nicholas, in particular! for he must have put it into her head to
remember the swate innocents.”

It is not our purpose to follow them in their tramp, as we have traced
the course of the lady’s husband. Suffice it to say, that Ellen’s basket
was heavily burdened when they re-entered the house, and her mistress
bore sundry parcels in her hands, all of which were carefully deposited
upon the carpet beside the cots of the calmly-sleeping children. Ellen
was made happy, on her own account, by the present of a bank-bill for
her private spending, and intrusted with another of the same value for
Biddy; then excused from further service. If the maid had been mistaken
in her surmise as to the tears she had seen in eyes which were generally
dry and bright, there was no doubt as to the melting mood that overtook
the mother when she removed the four stockings from the place where
Nettie had laid them. She even pressed them to her lips before fastening
the tops of each pair together with a stout pin, and hanging them over
the footboards of the beds. To unpack the basket and undo papers, with
as little rustling as was practicable, was her next act. She paused,
when everything was uncovered, to survey her acquisitions. Her
expenditures had been on a scale far less grand than her husband’s, but
maternal tact had guided her in the selection of acceptable gifts. There
were a cooking-stove, with its assortment of pans, griddles, and
kettles; a work-box of satinwood, lined with red velvet, and well
stocked; a cradle with a baby-doll asleep under the muslin curtain, for
Nettie. For Ally, she had provided a bag of beautiful agate marbles; a
fine humming-top; a paint-box, and a set--fourteen in number--of
Abbott’s inimitable “Rollo” books for boys. She had not forgotten the
twins, as was evidenced by a couple of whips; two picture-books, and two
tin horses mounted upon wheels; one attached to an express wagon, the
other to a baker’s cart. Nor had she disdained to call upon the
confectioner. Her conical bundles contained “Christmas mixture;” plain
sugar candy; peppermint lozenges and oranges; more wholesome, or,
rather, less hurtful sweets than the richer and costly delicacies that
had captivated her lord’s fancy. Altogether, the sight was a pleasant
one, and a satisfactory, if one might judge by the gleam of comfort that
overspread the tear-stained visage. She had just dropped a handful of
the “mixture” into the foot of Ally’s sock, when a soft tap at the door
startled her. It was Ellen, and she bore a plate, covered with a napkin,
in her hand.

“If you plaze, mem--Biddy hopes you won’t be offended, mem--but the
children were so disappointed to-day, mem; and when I told her you were
going to give them a Christmas, she made so bold as to fry them a few
doughnuts. She wouldn’t have taken the privilege, only, seeing Christmas
comes but once a year, and it’s good children they are, mem!”

“They are, Ellen! Tell Biddy that I am much obliged to her. These are
very nice, indeed!”

Yet she cried over them when the girl was gone. Her very servants pitied
the cruelly-oppressed little ones!

“I have been a hard, unsympathizing mother!” she thought, sobbingly.
“God forgive me this, my sin!” She wiped away the tears, and resumed her
task. “William will think I have lost my senses!” she ruminated,
cramming an orange into the leg of the tightly-stuffed sock. “But I
can’t help it, if he does!”

And, as if invoked by her unspoken thought, her husband, accoutred as I
have described, stood before her.

“William!”

“Emily!”

The two detected culprits stared at one another for an instant, in
unuttered, because unutterable amazement; then, as the truth dawned upon
their minds, they burst into a fit of laughter that threatened to awake
the dreamers.

“Hush-sh-sh!” said Mrs. Dryden, wiping away the tears of mirth that now
hung where bitterer drops had trickled awhile ago, and pointing to the
beds, “Let me see what you have been doing?”

The prudent economist could not repress a single exclamation of gentle
reproof, as she examined the store. “William Dryden! And in these hard
times, my dear!”

“Christmas comes but once a year, wifie! and then I had to make up for
lost time, you know. I’ll tell you how it happened, and then you won’t
blame me. I felt badly after tea, and came up to say a kind word to
them”--nodding towards the brother and sister--“before they went to
sleep, and, that door being ajar, I heard them talking”--

“And listened, as I did at _that_ one!” cried Mrs. Dryden, throwing her
arms around his neck, and beginning to cry afresh. “O husband! I have
been so miserable ever since! have felt so guilty! Only to think, that I
was teaching my children to hate me and to hate their home--making their
lives wretched!”

“Don’t think of it, dear! After this, there will be peace and good-will
among us!” soothed the husband, his own eyes shining suspiciously. “If
we have made a mistake, we are ready to correct it. Now, let us see what
disposition can be made of this cargo of valuables. And I left a lot of
gimcracks--sweet things, you know--down stairs.”

Christmas morning came, clear and brilliant, with frosty sunlight, and
Mrs. Dryden, as was her custom, tapped at the children’s door, having
beforehand stealthily unclosed it far enough to allow herself and her
accomplice a view of the interior of the dormitory.

“Come, little birds, it is time you were out of your nests!”

The cheery, loving voice aroused the sleepers more thoroughly than
sterner accents would have done. The mother was spared the pain of
knowing that the novelty of the address made it so efficacious.

“Yes, Mamma!” answered Nettie, starting up in bed.

“All right!” responded Ally, and he turned over.

Thus it happened that the eyes of both rested simultaneously upon an
object in the centre of the apartment, and a ringing cry of joy escaped
them.

“Nettie, Santa Claus _did_ come!”

“Ally, don’t you know what I prayed for?”

They were upon the floor before the words had left their lips. The next
few minutes were passed in speechless admiration of the miraculous
edifice that had arisen during their hours of unconsciousness. Mr.
Dryden had made a second trip to the street, the night before, to buy a
Christmas tree. A broad, flat box, covered with a white cloth, formed
the base upon which this was set. The larger toys were placed around
the trunk, and smaller ones hung among the gilt balls, flags, and
flowers, that decked the boughs. Miss Dolly sat at the root upon one of
her new chairs, her foot upon the rocker of the new cradle, and, perched
up in the topmost branches, was Santa Claus--white beard, pipe, pack,
and all--smiling broadly upon his enraptured devotees.

Nettie broke the spell of ecstatic silence. “Dear Mamma! Papa, darling!”
she screamed. “Come and see! It is just like fairy-land!”

And flying to the door, her curls streaming back, and her face fairly
luminous with delight, she ran directly into her parents’ arms.

“Christmas shall be an ‘institution’ in our family, hereafter!” said Mr.
Dryden, that night, when the happy children had kissed them “good-night”
over and over again. “I am a better man for last evening’s work and this
day’s innocent frolic. I feel twenty years younger, and fifty degrees
happier. It pays, my dear--_it pays!_”




                           A Christmas Talk

                             With Mothers.

                            [Illustration]




                    A Christmas Talk with Mothers.


“I do not approve of lady lecturers, as a general thing,” I remarked
meditatively, a while since, to a gentleman, in whose presence I am
somewhat prone to think aloud.

“You allude to _public_ lectures?” said he, interrogatively, with
unnecessary emphasis.

“Of course!”

“Oh!” and he resumed the study of a very dry-looking volume.

Affecting not to observe the mischievous gleam of his eye, I resumed:--

“But I am sometimes tempted to ask the use of your lecture-room for one
evening, to call together an audience from which all persons of the
masculine gender shall be excluded, and, then and there, harangue my own
sex upon a subject that has engrossed much of my time and thoughts for
eight years past.”

“What is it--cookery or dry goods? Either topic would be popular.”

“Something more important than both put together!” I retorted. My theme
would be--

“‘_The Rights of Babies and the Responsibilities of Mothers!_’”

My auditor raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips very slightly--just
enough to give one the impression that he would have whistled, had not
politeness restrained him. Seeing that I was in nowise abashed by these
discouraging manifestations, he offered an amendment to my resolution.

“Better write your discourse, instead, and have it printed.”

“But,” I objected, “what I would say would be addressed to women alone.
We don’t care to let men know how unmercifully we can handle one
another. Moreover, I should use great plainness of speech”--

“I think I can set your mind at rest on that point,” interrupted my
companion, drily. “I don’t believe many men would read your treatise.”

Whereupon he picked up _his_ treatise and withdrew to his sanctum,
leaving me to arrange the heads of my “discourse,” or to ponder the
meaning of his last equivocal observation.

And thus it came to pass, that, sitting lonely here, and arranging plans
for the coming festival--the jubilee that, throughout Christendom,
commemorates the birth of a little Child in the grotto of far-off
Bethlehem; musing of that Child and his mother, while from the wall, the
Mater Dolorosa, wondrous in beauty and in sorrow, looked down upon
me--thought followed thought, and memories--sweet, tender, and full of
joy, others sad, yet precious, and mingled with wistful yearning, flowed
in upon me, and I have taken up my pen, not to indite a lecture or an
essay, but a simple, homely, heartfelt Christmas letter to my
fellow-workers in the great mission to which God has called us.

“And first, let me remark, by way of ‘beginning at the beginning,’ as
old-time teachers were wont to exhort their scholars to do--that _Babies
have a right to be_.”

This is not the page whereon to record a frank and full opinion upon
such a subject, nor is mine the will or ability to treat of the
mysteries of iniquity, the violence done to conscience, humanity, and
natural affection, that have come to be talked of in the so-called
higher circles as familiar things, convenient and expedient measures for
leaving fashionable mothers--(does not the holy word look like a bitter
sarcasm, written in this connection?)--for leaving frivolous, heartless
mothers, I say, at liberty to follow the devices of their own foolish
brains, and delivering sordid fathers from what I have heard professing
Christians style--“the curse of a large family.” I know that such
abominations do exist, and so does the fair reader, who is ready to
ostracize me for daring to hint thus publicly at what she privately
approves and advocates. I can see that our pleasure-loving neighbors
over the water are in a fair way to be rivaled, if not eclipsed, in
certain respects, by their American cousins. Further than this I will
not go. I only refer to this, to me revolting subject, to substantiate a
conclusion at which I have arrived in the course of my serious and often
sadly troubled lucubrations with regard to this matter. It is my
conviction that the real root of the evil lies back of this, its most
reprehensible offshoot. I have no means of settling the date at which
the opinion or prejudice was implanted on this continent, but certain it
is, that a vast proportion--I fear, a large majority--of American
mothers, would secretly, if not openly, controvert my first proposition.
There is among us, if not a woeful deficiency of genuine maternal
instinct, a style--a fashion, if you choose to call it, and a very vile
fashion it is--of deprecating as a grievous affliction the repeated
visits of what a higher authority than “the noted Dr. ----, from Paris,”
or the autocrat of neighborhood gossips, has declared to be among
Heaven’s best gifts to human kind.

“Poor Mrs. A., with her eight children, like a flight of stairs--just
two years between them”--is, by her friends’ very pity, made to feel
that she is, in some sense, the inferior of Mrs. B., who “manages _so_
beautifully!” She has but three, and they are seven years apart.

It matters not that Mrs. A.’s household resembles a snug nest of
chirping birdlings, who lie all the warmer for being obliged to stow a
little closely; who learn patience and loving-kindness and generosity by
hourly practice of these graces upon one another, without being aware
that any lessons are set for them--they come so naturally; who never
lack company or sympathy, by reason of the abundance of home companions
and home love; who bid fair to keep their parents’ name long alive upon
the earth, and, in their own maturity, to transmit to an extended
circle--to a large community--it may be to a whole nation, the
principles taught them at their mother’s knees and from their father’s
lips. It signifies little to the feminine cabal that each one of the
little B.’s has been, for seven long weary years, that most forlorn and
pitiable of juvenile specimens--an only baby; has become dwarfed in
affections; narrowed as to ability to love and to enter into the
feelings of other children; thoroughly, and often incorrigibly selfish;
and when, at last, the lustrum being accomplished, the newer infant is
ushered into the world, the older regards it with dire distrust and
lurking jealousy, if not avowed dislike, as the usurper of his or her
hitherto undisputed rights.

“My children will never be companions for one another; they are so far
apart!” sighs Mrs. B., as the pert Miss of fourteen pronounces the tiny
sister, who has not numbered as many hours of existence, “a regular
bore!” and “wonders why she came. Nobody wants her; and it is too
provoking to have a baby in the house just as one is beginning to go
into society, and wants a good deal of gay company.”

But Mrs. Grundy--an American Mrs. Grundy, you may be sure, with a dash
of Parisian philosophy--has declared the one matron to be a broken-down
druge, a domestic slave--“quite behind the times, in fact!” while “Mrs.
B. is a truly fortunate and”--here Mrs. Grundy whispers--“a very
enlightened and judicious lady!”

What an odious savor in Mrs. G.’s delicate nostrils would be the
antiquated but pious friend who should, out of the plenitude of his love
and good will for Mr. Grundy, pray, in the words of the Psalmist, that
his wife might be a fruitful vine, and his children olive plants round
about his table!

No! we do not, as a class, appreciate the dignity--I use the word
advisedly--the _dignity_ and privilege of maternity! In this respect,
our English sisters are far ahead of us. The Hebrew women, under the
Theocracy, understood it better still, when Rachel pined in her quiet
tent for the murmur of baby-voices and the touch of baby-fingers, and
Hannah knelt in the court of the temple, to supplicate, with strong
crying and tears, that the holy fountains of motherly love within her
heart might flow out upon offspring of her own. In those days it was the
childless wife, and not she who had borne many sons and daughters, who
besought that her reproach might be taken away; that she might be
accounted worthy to be intrusted with the high duty of rearing children
to swell the ranks of the Lord’s chosen people.

“If I felt as you do,” said a lady, sneeringly, to a friend of mine;
“if I considered the gift of children a blessing, and the care of them a
delightful task, I would not wait for the slow process by which Nature
creates families, but adopt a dozen at a time from an asylum.”

“They would not be mine!” was the quiet reply.

I do not envy that mother her heart, who does not enter into the meaning
of this rejoinder; who has not felt the delicious thrill of ownership in
an object so lovely and precious as the helpless babe she has braved
death itself to win; the awed delight of contemplating the new
creation--living, intelligent, immortal--given to be _hers_! It may
be--I have seen it somewhere asserted--that there is, after all, a
species of sublimated selfishness in the ecstatic sweetness of the
thought so well expressed by Emily Judson:--

    “The pulse first caught its tiny stroke,
       The blood its crimson hue from _mine_!
     The life which _I_ have dared invoke
       Henceforth is parallel with THINE!”

The candid reader who has known the depth and strength of a mother’s
love, her patience, constancy, and self-sacrifice, will, I fancy, agree
with me in pronouncing the selfishness to be _very_ “sublimated.”

Said Mr. Toots, upon the occasion of the birth of his fourth
daughter--“The oftener we can repeat that extraordinary woman the
better!” Everybody laughs at the proud husband’s praise of his spouse,
but--ask your heart, loving mother, if there is not a strange fullness
of joy in watching the reproduction of your traits, physical, mental,
and moral, in your child? How many times a day does she bring back some
half-forgotten scene of your own childhood? How frequently, at the
expression of her fancies, or opinions, or desires, do you say, with a
smile, a sigh--perchance a tear--“I felt, or thought, or longed the same
at her years; it is her inheritance?” Is there not a joy yet greater, an
inexpressible swelling of love and pride, as you see in the lineaments
and gesture of your boy, the faithful portraiture of one dearer to you
than your own soul? I am not talking now to those who have felt nothing
of all this; from whom the knowledge of these sacred mysteries has been
withheld, and who are incapable, from the barrenness and shallowness of
their own spiritual natures, of ever entering fully into them. It is
useless to say to these that motherhood is a holy thing, and offspring
the boon of Heaven; that, amidst the wild clamor of woman’s rights and
woman’s sphere, she best enacts the rôle appointed her by the wise
Parent of all, does most to elevate her race, who rears strong, good
men, and gentle, noble daughters to serve God and the generation to
come. To the gross, all things are gross, and these truths are pearls,
too clear in their purity to be trampled by such. I appeal to
mothers--to brave, pious women who fear God and love their husbands--but
who have yet never arisen to the perfect realization of the grandeur of
the work assigned them; never thought of themselves as the architects of
the nation’s fortunes, the sculptors, whose fair or foul handiwork is to
outlast their age, to outlive Time, to remain through all Eternity. I
would awaken those whom the prejudices of education or the plausible
sophistries of the modern fashionable school have blinded to the deep
significance of those words--“Behold, children are an heritage from the
Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward!”

Women! sisters! be assured there is something tearfully and radically
wrong in a system that teaches us to despise or refuse our rightful
share in our Father’s riches! Look to it, lest haply ye be found to sin
against God!

My second assertion is that it is a _right of babies to have mothers_.

“I have never desired children; have always been bitterly opposed to the
coming of each new claimant upon my time and labor,” I once heard a lady
say. “Two of mine never breathed, and I experienced a sensation of
joyful relief when I found that my cares were not then to be increased.
Yet I love my children very much as they grow older, and my conscience
assures me that I have discharged my duty to them faithfully. I accept
them as inevitable evils which religion and philosophy require me to
endure as well and gracefully as possible.”

Yet the speaker was not a “strong-minded woman,” in the popular
acceptation of the term. She believed in St. Paul, and had never read a
word of Malthus in her life, if indeed she were aware of the existence
of that author. She reprobated women’s colleges and learned ladies;
stayed at home and kept her husband’s house with all diligence, and was
generally regarded as a pattern wife and estimable member of society. I
declare, nevertheless, that if she spoke the truth in this instance, her
babies were motherless. They had a capable nurse; one who discharged the
external duties of her position with conscientious fidelity, and who, in
the course of time, as any tolerably warm-hearted nursery-maid could not
but have done, grew into a more lively degree of interest in the
winsome beings committed to her charge. But of true mother-love--the
beautiful instinct, and sacred as beauful--the blending of hope and
longing and solicitude that, not content with receiving the dear trust
with eager embrace at the threshold of what we call life, goes forth to
meet it in that mysterious, imperfect existence which even she does not
wholly comprehend, and from the moment the revelation of the coming
advent is known to herself, studies the comfort and well-being of the
one whose name may perhaps never be written among the living upon the
earth; watching and regulating the workings of her physical nature;
keeping her mind calm and free; hushing every wild heart-beat, lest the
irregular throb should disturb the exquisitely susceptible organization
of that which lies so near it--that always marvelous, yet ever-renewed
miracle of human devotion, which Deity does not shun to name in
connection with His own boundless, perfect love; of this, the decent
matron in question knew about as much as I do of Sanscrit, or the
dialect spoken by the natives among the coffee groves of
Borrioboola-Gha.

I am happy to believe that the maternal care which antedates the birth
of its object is becoming daily a subject of deeper thought and more
enlightened comprehension, with those whose duty it is to be instructed
in this regard. It is only among the ignorant or the reckless that we
find total disbelief and utter neglect of the laws which treat of the
intimate and subtle relation existing between mother and child. It is no
longer customary to scout as old wives’ fables the tales of horrible
wrong done by passionate or imprudent women to the bodies and intellects
of their unborn babes. But we have still much to learn, and more to heed
upon this vital point.

Passing thus briefly over the earliest phase of motherly duty, we come
to the education of the living, breathing, “necessary evil,” or
cherished blessing, as the parent’s taste or principles may determine
the little stranger to be. The pink, plump, piping bantling has been
exhibited to the usual round of ceremonious visitors, and passed muster
with all--in the mother’s hearing--having been praised by one as the
image of his papa, and by another, no less discerning, as his mother’s
miniature, and, content with having acted well its part, in voting him
to be a “remarkably fine child,” the “finest of the season,” Society
dismisses the subject and remands baby to his curtained crib in the
darkest corner of the nursery. For all that Society cares or thinks, he
may, in that convenient retreat, slumber away the seasons of infancy and
adolescence in a sort of Rip Van Winkle torpor, until his long clothes
drop from his growing frame like the husk from a ripe nut. Society does
not regard a “human boy”--as Mr. Chadband has it--as having arrived at
the “interesting age” until he attains the age of discretion. Young lady
cousins, enthusiastic school-girls, or matrons, incited to the
examination by thoughts of their own little ones, occasionally lift the
lace curtain and turn down the coverlet; call him an “angel,” and remark
in rapturous whispers upon his increasing size and comeliness, and
forget all about him by the time they reach the foot of the stairs. Or,
an old friend of the family who “dotes upon babies,” begs that the
“cherub” may be brought down to the parlor, saying, in pathetic
reproach, “To think, my love, how seldom I see the darling!” Really
deceived into a belief of the sincerity of her visitor’s desire, mamma
sends off an order to nurse; baby is caught up from his crib of ease,
thrust into a clean slip, his tender scalp brushed to the right and left
of the line--more or less imaginary--where the down--_alias_ hair--ought
to part, until the soft, throbbing spot on the top of his head pulsates
faster and harder with pain and fright. Duly prepared for inspection,
he performs the journey to the lower floor, where he undergoes a
vigorous kissing from the baby-lover, who “must hold him” herself. The
blinds are opened, that his budding beauties may be clearly seen, and
while the connoisseur goes into a transport of admiration, Master Baby,
alarmed, fluttered, and uncomfortable, first looks long and piteously
into the strange visage above him, and proceeds to express his
sentiments by wrinkling up his cherubic nose and opening his cherry
mouth for a squall.

“There! take him, nurse!” says the visitor, hastily. “He does not fancy
new acquaintances. In a year or two, he will be just at the interesting
age, and we shall be capital friends. Not a word, my dear!”--to Mamma,
who stammers an apology. “All young children behave worst when we want
them to show off their prettiest ways.”

This may be true, but for my part I don’t blame the babies.

Most Papas are shy or negligent of their heirs or heiresses at this
epoch. It is quite common to hear ladies relate, as a proof, I suppose,
of their spouses’ superiority to small matters, that they are utterly
careless of their babies while they are in arms.

“Mr. C. never notices one of his until it is two years of age,” remarks
Mrs. C. “Then, when he sees that it is a pretty plaything, he becomes
quite fond of it, enjoys frolicking with it.”

As he would with a puppy, which, frisking about his feet, should attract
his lordship’s attention to its graceful shape and winning ways!

“Mr. D. thinks young babies disgusting little animals,” laughs Mrs. D.,
in reply. “He says that he would not kiss one under eighteen months old,
for five hundred dollars!”

My private opinion, which, of course, I do not divulge to Mrs. D., is
that her husband is a Yahoo, and ought to be banished to Gulliver’s
famous island, in order that he might consort with his fellows.

Even good, right-minded, affectionate Papas--like your stronger half and
mine, dear reader!--do not overwhelm his very littleness with
demonstrations of esteem.

“Say good-by to Baby!” you plead, as his paternal progenitor enters the
nursery to take leave of you until dinner-time.

If he does not smoke, and is _very_ amiable, he stoops and touches the
little forehead with his lips--a very different salute from that
bestowed upon yourself. If he has lighted a cigar, he replies: “I won’t
kiss him. The tobacco might sicken him. Good-by, monkey!” tapping the
velvet cheek with one finger.

Baby blinks and throws his fat arms about in a blind, senseless fashion,
which you think very cunning.

“Did you ever see a child grow and improve as he does!” you ask,
delightedly.

“Oh, very!” is the good-natured, but not very pertinent response. “The
fact is, wifie, I am not much of a judge of the article in its present
state. Wait until he reaches the interesting age, and you will have no
cause to complain of my lukewarm praise.”

Bridget, also, “is very fond of children, when they get to be knowing
and wise, and full of pretty tricks, but she finds the care of a young
baby very confining,” and but for the tip-top wages she gets, would
probably look out for another place.

No, fond mother--and proud as fond! your blessed baby is, during the
first months of helpless, dumb infancy, “interesting” to nobody except
yourself. But there are weighty reasons besides the indifference of
others that should make him, now, the object of your especial care, and
this period one of continual watchfulness and affectionate solicitude.
Intrust to no nurse, however experienced, the task of bathing and
feeding, dressing and undressing, the tender little body. It will never
need your gentle handling, your quick eye, more than at present. A pin
misplaced, a sudden wrench of a joint; the twist of the upholding hand,
bringing the head or a limb into contact with table or chair, may lay
the foundation of years of pain and disease, if not of incurable
deformity.

We hear much talk about good and bad babies; how Mrs. Such-an-one always
has model children, that give her no trouble at all; but sleep and eat
at regular seasons, and never cry when awake, unless they are in pain,
while Mrs. So-and-so’s existence is a woeful burden with her restless,
fretful progeny, who turn day into night, and night into day, and
sometimes decline having any night at all in the course of the
twenty-four hours; who are continually crying to be fed at all manner of
inconvenient times; who are, in short, as wrong-headed and peevish brats
as one can find in a day’s ride. Yet, Mrs. So-and-so says that they are
healthy and hearty, and suffer no pain. “It is just her luck to have
cross children. All hers are born crabbed.”

In behalf of the infant tribe I enter a protest against this calumny.
Well-bred, healthy, comfortable babies are never cross until they are
rendered so, in spite of themselves, by mismanagement. If Mrs.
So-and-so puts her Bobby to sleep where he is liable to be awakened by
the ordinary noises of the household machinery, and, furthermore, when
these, or some untoward accident has started him from the slumber that
should have lasted two hours, before one-half of this time has elapsed,
if she makes matters worse by taking him up, instead of quieting all
external disturbance and lulling him again to rest before he knows where
he is, or what has happened; if he is fed just when it suits Mrs. S.’s
or Bridget’s convenience or Bobby’s whim, at intervals of varying
lengths; the probability, I may say, the certainty is, that Bobby will
become an unreasonable, discontented tyrant, a nuisance to himself and
to all around him. And if Susy, and Jenny, and Dicky are all trained
after the like manner, there is an equal certainty that Mrs. So-and-so
will have, among her acquaintances, the deserved reputation of being the
worn-out, irritable mother of a brood of cross, spoiled, “hateful”
children. But, again I say, I don’t blame the babies! First of all, make
the darlings welcome; that is half the battle! Then, make them
comfortable. A celebrated medical man gives three capital rules for
securing this desirable end: “Plenty of milk, plenty of sleep, and
plenty of flannel.” I would add a cardinal principle, governing every
other--begin from the outset--from the day of birth, if possible, a
gentle, firm system of punctuality in feeding, dressing, and putting to
sleep the wee things that lie, like breathing automata, upon the hands
that foster them. Like their fellows of a larger growth, they are
creatures of habit.

I wish--how fervently and how frequently, I dare not pretend to
say--that _method_, a wise and just system of duty and recreation, could
be made the chief earthly law of every household. Let there not only be
“a place for every thing and every thing in its place,” but a time for
every thing, and let every thing be done in its season. When I see the
mistress of a family toiling and worried from morning until night,
pulled a dozen different ways at once, by as many duties, all of
apparently equal importance, driving herself and servants, wearying her
husband by incessant complaints, and dragging, rather than bringing up
her children, I wonder not that American women break down so early, but
at the tenacity of life that enables them to endure their load for a
single year. The clever writer of an article, entitled “A Spasm of
Sense,” published not long since, in one of our most clever monthlies,
finds the cause of the lamentable condition of so many a domestic
establishment in the superabundance of olive-plants that crowd American
nurseries. From my different standpoint, I am inclined to believe the
trouble to be, not that there are too many babies, but that there are
not more wise and capable mothers.

I know a lady who was, when she married, a delicate, beautiful girl, the
petted favorite of a large circle of admiring friends. The seventh
anniversary of her wedding-day saw her the mother of five children.
Acquaintances, who only heard of this rapid increase of cares, shook
mournful heads and drew pitying sighs, between contemptuous smiles.
“What a change!”

It was a change, than which my eyes have rarely beheld a fairer. Her
babies were not pattern, spiritless dolls, but hearty, roguish
youngsters, who frolicked, and shouted, and disputed, as all sound,
sprightly children will do, and as they should not be hindered from
doing. But Mamma was at once the motive-power and centre of attraction
of the system, wherein these lively planets revolved. She was more
lovely, with a chastened, matronly beauty, than in her girlhood, and
discontent had ploughed no furrows in her smooth brow. To each of the
fast-coming troop she gave a motherly greeting, and, as by magic,
brought it, with its wishes and needs, under the influence of the
judicious law of order that extended over the rest of her band. She
nourished them from her bosom; bathed, dressed, and undressed them, and
herself laid them down for the nightly and midday slumber; made most of
their clothing with her own hands; as they grew older, directed their
studies--she “could not bear to send them from her to school!” Yet she
was the ever-patient, ever-cheerful referee in their sports and
quarrels; looked well to the other ways of her household; was a faithful
mistress, a good housekeeper, and a kind neighbor, and, withal, managed
to keep up with the best literature of the day; and when her husband’s
business hours were over, became his companion, at home and abroad, with
more ease and frequency than any other wife I ever saw.

This is no fancy sketch, nor have I done the original justice. It is not
surprising that the offspring of such a woman should rise up and call
her blessed; the marvel and disgrace are, that there are not hundreds
and thousands like her, throughout the country. I do not ask that our
daughters should be brought up in the belief that matrimony is the chief
end of woman’s existence. I do hold, in consideration of the fact that
an immense majority of our sex _do_ marry and have the cares of a family
laid upon them, that girls ought to receive a training which shall fit
them, in some degree, for a position involving responsibilities so
solemn and onerous.

I know the popular outcry against the slavishness of maternal duties.

“As well bury me alive after the first year of married life!” cries Mrs.
A-la-mode. “I, with my education and accomplishments, may surely aspire
to a higher position than that of nursery-maid! I consider that I serve
my children more effectually by reserving my strength and cultivating my
talents against such time as their maturer minds shall require my
companionship.”

In other words, Mrs. A-la-mode leaves it to hired menials to work,
irrigate, and plant the virgin soil, and expects, in the ripening of the
harvest, to put in her patent sickle--latest style--and gather such
grain as she shall then decree. I am acquainted with but one way in
which a woman can conscientiously and surely evade the fulfilment of a
mother’s obligations. In this day and country, there are no forced
marriages. If Miss Faintheart and Miss Easy abhor the prospect of
directing and fostering a young family, they can remain single; and, to
be frank, I think the next generation will be the gainers by their
celibacy.

Again, and strictly apropos to this division of my subject--_Babies have
a right to be heard_.

“My dear children,” said a Sabbath-school lecturer; “when I say ‘boys’ I
mean girls, and when I say ‘girls’ I mean boys.”

He designed to be entirely comprehensive in his address, and engage the
attention of both sexes; but his juvenile auditors were evidently in a
state of terrible confusion after this lucid preamble, most of them
imagining that he meditated some game of cross-purposes; as when “Rise,
No. 2” means that No. 2 must do quite the opposite thing and not budge,
upon penalty of a forfeit. But when I say “babies,” I mean children of
tender years--legal infants--and do not confine myself altogether to
those in arms.

Especially has a baby a right to a hearing from Mamma. Unless you have
been so foolish as to let him form a habit of crying--and this should be
carefully avoided--his wail or scream always means that something is
amiss, and it is your business to find out what it is. If you choose to
send Bridget to see “what ails that child, now!” at least let him be
brought to you for inquiry and for judgment. Take the convulsed,
struggling little fellow in your arms; draw his head to your bosom; pat
the wet cheeks and kiss the mouth quivering in distress, that is more
than he can bear, slight and ridiculous as it may be to you. Soothe and
quiet, before you chide, should there seem to be need for reproof.
Remember--and it is a sadly solemn thought--that your arms form the only
refuge outside the bosom of Infinite Compassion, to which he can, as man
and boy, flee alike in sin and woe, in innocence and joy. Don’t hush his
sobbed confession or complaint, however strangled and unintelligible. It
does him good to utter it, whether you understand it or not. Don’t call
him “a silly boy” for crying because he has broken the whip Papa gave
him only this morning, or because the pretty kitty Auntie sent him has
proved ungrateful and deserted her doting master. It is doubtful if you
ever had what was to you a greater loss than either of these is to him.
If his are tears of bereavement, kiss them away and hold up some promise
of future delight that shall cast a rainbow athwart the cloud of grief.
If he weeps in childish anger, be loving, while you rebuke. He loses
much--how much, Eternity can only tell--who has not learned, from
experience, the fullness and sweetness of that simple line--“_As one
whom his mother comforteth_.”

Never let your child have his cry out alone. If he is old enough to
observe that yours is studied neglect, he has also sense sufficient to
enable him to put his own construction upon what is, to him, your cruel
indifference to his suffering; and just in proportion as he recognizes
and resents this, your influence over him is weakened; his faith in your
love shaken. If he is too young to guess why you disregard his outcry,
terror and pain lay hold of his spirit, as is evinced by the changed
tone of his lamentation. Shall I tell you a little story, just here, one
which is unfortunately drawn from life?

A mother--a good woman, but a trifle too strong of will, and wedded to a
pet theory of family government, according to which, children were but
machines, to be subject in every particular to the authority of the
chief engineer--one evening laid her babe, about ten months old, in his
crib, for the night. The child manifested great unwillingness to lie
still, and presently began to cry. The mother seated herself quietly to
work upon the other side of the room, and took no outward notice of his
screams. An elderly gentleman, a relative, was present, and
remonstrated with her upon her silence.

“He will certainly injure himself, if you do not stop his crying!”

“That is the old-fashioned doctrine,” replied the parent, with a smile
of conscious superiority. “I always expect one grand struggle for
supremacy with each of my children. He is in revolt now, and must be
treated as a rebel. If I yield, and take him up, the lesson is lost.”

“I don’t ask you to take him up! Only speak to him. He is well-nigh
heart-broken. He will rupture a blood-vessel.”

“No danger! It strengthens his lungs to cry in that uproarious manner. I
have known babies to scream for two or three hours, without sustaining
the least injury.”

“You will excuse me, at any rate, from staying here to see the battle
out!” and the uncle left the room.

Returning, at the end of an hour, he found the child still
screaming--now, in an anguished shriek that rent the man’s heart. The
woman and mother sat still and sewed steadily--it seemed calmly.

“I can not and will not bear this!” ejaculated the old gentleman. “If
you don’t take pity on that poor little thing, I will!”

“Uncle!” the niece lifted her stern eyes. “I permit no one--not even my
husband--to interfere in my management of my child. His passion is at
its height. It will soon subside.”

The cries were, indeed, growing less vehement. Too anxious to retire
again until the scene was over, the uncle walked the room, hearkening,
with tortured nerves, to the feebler and still feebler wail; sinking, by
and by, into fitful sobbings; then, into pants like those of a tired,
hunted-down animal. These came at longer and longer intervals--and all
was still. The uncle approached the crib, and bent over it.

“An hour and three-quarters!” said the mother, triumphantly, looking at
the clock. “You will find, uncle, that, having gained this victory, I
shall never have another contest with him.”

“You never will, madam!” was the awful rejoinder. “Your child is dead!”

I wish I could say that this incident was of doubtful authenticity, but
it is _true_, from beginning to end. I grant you that it is an extreme
case, but the like might occur with any young child. Ask yourself how
you would endure a fit of violent hysterical weeping, for the space of
an hour, or an hour and three-quarters! Days would elapse ere you
recovered from the effects of the shock to nerves and heart; but “it
never hurts an infant to cry.” That which would exhaust and irritate
your lungs, “strengthens” his!

If your older child has any thing to divulge which he deems important,
contrive to give him a patient hearing; encourage him to full
confidence. Many a life has been embittered by fears or fancies, that
could have been removed as soon as they were formed, by five minutes’
free conversation with a kind, sensible parent. To this day, I own to
feeling an unpleasant sensation at the sight of any singularly-shaped or
colored cloud in the heavens. This I attribute directly to a terrible
fright I had when but four and a half years old.

My nurse, a young colored girl--a genuine Topsey, by the way--had early
instructed me in the popular belief concerning the personal appearance
of His Satanic Majesty, and I had swallowed every word, until his horns,
cloven hoof, forked tail, fiery breath, and worst of all, a certain
three-pronged fork he was in the habit of carrying about with him, that
he might impale unwary sinners, as Indians spear salmon--were articles
of as firm faith with me as was the fact of my own existence. He had an
inconvenient practice of careering through mid-air--Topsey had
added--with this trident already poised, on the lookout for bad little
girls, who were supposed to be dainty tidbits in his estimation. One
day, I was walking in the garden, unconscious of coming ill, when,
chancing to look up, I saw, right above me, a small, dark cloud,
irregular in outline, and moving swiftly before a strong wind. My first
glance caught only this; my second traced, with the rapidity of
lightning, the head, the tail, the lower limbs, and, brandishing wildly
in air, the right arm, holding the fatal flesh-fork!

St. Dunstan or Luther would have stood his ground, as did Christian
against Apollyon, but I had not the pluck of these worthies, and had I
been endowed with the spirit of all three, there were neither tongs,
ink-stand, nor two-edged sword handy. So I chose the wiser part of
valor, and ran, in frenzied haste, for the house, never stopping until I
was safely ensconced under my mother’s bed. Here I lay for a long time,
quaking with fear, queer shivers running down my spine at thought of the
sharp points I had so narrowly escaped. Then the supper-bell rang, and I
crept out, unperceived. I had no appetite, and must have worn a
strange, scared look, for my mother asked if I were sick. I answered,
“No,” very shame-facedly, and she did not press her inquiries. Children
are not apt to be very communicative as to any great fright, except in
the excitement of the first alarm. They fear to live it over in the
recital.

That night, for the first time in my life, I cried to have the lamp left
burning in the chamber where I slept. My mother reasoned with me, for a
while, telling me that the angels watched over good children, etc. This
I did not doubt, but I was by no means sure that I _was_ a good child.
The apparition of the afternoon was frightful circumstantial evidence to
the contrary. At last she scolded me for my cowardice and went away,
taking the precious light with her. I wonder that my hair did not turn
white during the ensuing hours of thick darkness. I pity myself now, as
I remember the poor, frightened baby, lying trembling on her little bed,
and staring into the gloom, peopled by her imagination with horrors.
Driven to desperation, I once awoke my older sister, who shared my
couch, and, in an awe-stricken whisper, imparted my fears and their
origin. She was not credulous or imaginative, and, perhaps, did not
quite understand what I said, for her only answer was--“pshaw!” and she
was sound asleep again in a second. How and when slumber came to me I
know not, but my mother reproved me, next morning, for wrapping the
coverlet so tightly about my head, saying that I would be smothered some
night, if I continued the practice.

Three sentences from either of my parents would have laid the hobgoblin
to rest forever, and I recollect that I did, several times, essay to
broach the subject to my mother, very unskillfully, I dare say, for she
did not encourage my preliminary remarks, and resolution failed me
before I reached the point. I was a tall girl of fourteen when I
confessed to her that, for five or six years, I believed that I had
really seen the devil!

Lastly--for my rambling “talk” has already transcended the limits I at
first assigned to it--_Babies have a right to be babies_.

That precocious and unnatural growth of prudence, propriety, and
learning in young children, which is variously described as
“old-fashioned,” “smart,” and “wearing a gray head upon green
shoulders,” is sometimes an offensive, always a pitiable sight. A life
without childhood is like an arid summer day, to which the dew of
morning has been denied. There are blossoms which the heat of incipient
decay has forced into premature expansion. We all understand this law
of Divine husbandry. Happy is she who has never had reason to tremble at
sight of this early and brilliant bloom; who has not wept unavailing
tears over the pale blossom, as it lay, crushed and faded, at the
grave’s mouth! Well is it then for the bereaved mother’s peace of mind
if she can, in the review of the brief years during which the gifted one
was lent to her, comfort herself with the thought that she strove, in
patient, far-seeing love, to repress, rather than stimulate, the
unhealthy growth of intellectual powers that were in danger of
outstripping physical vigor; that she rose superior to the vulgar
ambition to have her child excel all others of his age in scholarship
and showy accomplishments. Ah! it is not until the golden locks are
hidden by the green sod, and the busy brain forever still, that,
recalling the deep sayings and vivid thought-flashes that made us look
upon our noble boy with such triumphant affection, we measure the short
mound with tear-blinded eyes, and say: “We should have known, from the
first, that all our bright dreams for him were to suffer rude, terrible
awakening _here_! When we should have looked for the blade only, the
bud appeared and the flowers. The fruit could only ripen in heaven!”

Do not seek to make of your children monstrous, uncomely, infant
phenomena. If, by some special interposition of preserving mercy, their
lives and health do not fall a sacrifice to your weak vanity, you will
discover, when your prodigy has completed his course of book-study, that
he is not one whit better fitted for the actual fight with life and
labor than is the fellow-student who used to ran wild, with torn hat,
trousers out at the knees, rough fists, chapped by wind and weather, and
pockets frightfully distended by a miscellaneous collection of unripe
apples, jack-stones, peanuts, top-cord, “taffey,” whistles, gingerbread,
pocket-knife, hard-boiled eggs, iron nails, of assorted sizes, and,
perhaps, a living specimen or two, in the shape of a spotted terrapin or
a June-bug, with a string tied to its leg; the while your Pindar
Augustus, in white linen pants and cheeks to match, sat in learned
abstraction from all mean and common things, his spine curved, and his
baby-brows knit over his Homer or Euclid. It is distressing, yet
instructive, to see how the mill of every-day life grinds down college
geniuses into very ordinary men; how the oft-quoted logic of events
proves the “bright particular star” of

[Illustration]

the family circle and the school-room to be, after all, a luminary of,
at best, the fourth or fifth magnitude. You gain nothing except
mortification and disappointment, by cheating your wonderful scion out
of his childhood.

I am afraid that most of us, even those who have not fallen into the
gravely absurd error just referred to, are yet apt to expect too much of
our bairns. They may be marvels of sweetness, and sprightliness, and
filial devotion, but they are only babies after all. “Children should be
seen--not heard!” is often repeated by us in thoughtlessness or
ignorance of the real character of the maxim. It is illiberal and cruel,
and belongs to the age when a father held almost unlimited power over
the very life of his child; when the younger members of the household
never dared to sit down in the presence of their parents, without their
express and gracious permission. I agree that a pert, loud-tongued child
is an offence, at all times, but do not let us, on this account, condemn
to silence the bird-like voices that make sweetest music in our hearts
and homes. Even birds sing sometimes when we would rather they should
refrain; so let us be forbearing with the clamor of the babies. Do not
pretend to judge them by the rules you would apply to grown people.

“Father!” says a bright-eyed boy, as his parent enters the house at
evening, “did you remember to get me the ball you promised?”

“I did not, Tom. You shall certainly have it to-morrow.”

Tom goes off, in apparent content. In reality, he is sorely
disappointed; but he is a good child, and does not wish to make his
father unhappy. The promise for to-morrow helps him to bear the trial
tolerably well. The next evening, he is more backward about asking. He
hangs around his parent’s chair for some time, in hopeful suspense, but
as the longed-for plaything does not appear, he ventures timidly upon a
diplomatic “feeler”--

“Father, maybe you’ve forgot your promise, again?”

The father has had a harassing day--filled with carking care--and the
smouldering temper needs but a spark to influence it.

“Boy!” he says, hastily, “if you ever say ‘ball’ to me again, you shall
not have it at all! I will not be teased out of my life about your
jimcracks!”

Tom shrinks back, as if he had been struck in the face; creeps silently
off to his little room, and there, in solitude, cries as if his heart
would break. He _has_ had a blow. It is not so much the loss of the toy,
but his is a sensitive nature, and his father’s words were sharp swords.
He meant to be very good, very patient. Nothing was further from his
thoughts than to annoy his usually kind parent. Mingling with, and
embittering his grief, is a burning sense of injustice. He knows that
the injury was undeserved.

“Father wouldn’t have talked so to a grown man! It’s just because I’m a
poor little boy, and can’t help myself!”

I fear there is too much truth in this shrewd conclusion of Tom’s. We
would not dare insult those of our own age, as we do our children.

“That boy is growing sulky!” growls the father. “Did you see how glum he
looked because I forgot a paltry plaything? I must take him in hand!”

Then is the time for you, the mother of the wronged child, to speak up
boldly in his behalf. Represent kindly, but candidly, to your irritated
lord, the true value of the promised gift to the boy, and the greatness
of the disappointment.

“And after all, Papa, we can not expect Tom to exercise much
self-control or self-denial yet. Remember, he is just five years old,
and babies will be babies, you know!”

If he is the husband so good a wife and mother deserves to have, he will
not only acknowledge his fault to you, but seek out little Tom in his
lonely chamber, and with a fond kiss tell him that “Papa spoke shortly
awhile ago, because he was very tired and had had a great deal to
trouble him to-day, but that he will surely remember to bring him a
famous great ball to-morrow night.”

There are times and circumstances in which it is very hard to remember
that “babies will be babies.” Bessy, and Kitty, and Freddy are playing
in the nursery adjoining your bedroom, where you lie in the agonies of
“one of your headaches.” Every not-very-strong mother knows just what
that means. You have told the little ones that you are in great pain,
and having provided them with books, blocks, slates, and the like
“sitting-still plays,” as Bessie calls them, and begging them to try and
be quiet for half an hour, have withdrawn to your darkened retreat. They
are loving, well-meaning children, and, for almost ten minutes, there is
a refreshing season of calm. You are just forgetting torture in a
soothing slumber, when, thump! bang! down comes the castle, the
erection of which has kept Freddy still thus long. He would not be a boy
if he did not hurrah at the crash; the girls laugh and clap their hands;
and uproar is shortly the order of the hour. Don’t spring from your bed,
and, confronting them with your pale face and bloodshot eyes, accuse
them of disobedience and want of affection for you. They love you very
dearly, and they “did mean to mind,” they will tell you penitently, “but
they just forgot!”

It is baby-nature to be forgetful, and I am glad that it is. The
injuries, and slights, and wounded feeling of maturer years are enough
to make of memory a whip of scorpions. I am thankful that, with the
child, a kiss, a smile, a kind word will efface the recollection of the
hasty reproof, the cross look, or--I blush for human nature as
illustrated in some women while I write it!--the impatient blow that has
wrung blood from the tender little heart. Thank Heaven that babies have
short memories! so short that the suffering of cutting one tooth is
clean forgotten before the next saws its jagged edge through the swollen
gum.

Furthermore, keep them babies so long as you can without making yourself
and them ridiculous, and interfering with the graver duty of preparing
them for their place in the working-world. The dew-drop must exhale by
and by, but it lingers longest in the bosom of the flower that folds its
petals most jealously and fondly above it. The virgin purity of the snow
must change, with dust and melting, into the hue of the earth beneath;
but it is a woeful sight. We would fain delay the process by every means
in our power. Above all, let us make it our prayer that we may never
forget that we were once children, and how we felt, reasoned, and acted
then.

Who of us does not treasure in her casket of remembrance certain golden
days or hours that we would not lose for the wealth of a kingdom? Your
daughter leans against your knee, as my little five-year-old does on
mine, with “Mamma, please tell me a story about when you were a little
girl; how glad you were when your Papa brought you home a new doll, with
blue eyes and curling hair, in place of the one the dogs tore up; or
about the grand holidays you used to have in the woods; or how your Papa
once took you to slide on the ice-pond--and O, Mamma! do tell me about
all the Christmases you ever had!”

All the Christmases I ever had! I wish I could remember them, every
one--for those I do recall are strung upon my memory like pearls upon a
silken cord, and each is a joy forever. There is but one against which
I have set a black cross--the dreadful morning when the first thing I
drew from my stocking was a switch! I seem to see the lithe, keen,
wicked-looking rod now, and hear the shout of laughter that greeted its
appearance--mirth, that quickly subsided before my torrent of grief and
shame. I was soon told that the obnoxious article was placed there “in
fun,” by a visitor in the family.

I should like to see the visitor who should dare to practice such a
piece of “fun” upon one of _my_ children!

Never deny the babies their Christmas! It is the shining seal set upon a
year of happiness. If the preparations for it--the delicious mystery
with which these are invested; the solemn parade of clean, whole
stockings in the chimney corner; or the tree, decked in secret, to be
revealed in glad pomp upon the festal day--if these and many other
features of the anniversary are tedious or contemptible in your sight,
you are an object of pity; but do not defraud your children of joys
which are their right, merely because you have never tasted them. Let
them believe in Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas, or Kriss Kringle, or
whatever name the jolly Dutch saint bears in your region. Some
latter-day zealots, more puritanical than wise, have felt themselves
called upon, in schools, and before other juvenile audiences, to deny
the claims of the patron of merry Christmas to popular love and
gratitude. Theirs is a thankless office; both parents and children
feeling themselves to be aggrieved by the gratuitous disclosure, and
this is as it should be. If it be wicked to encourage such a delusion in
infant minds, it must be a transgression that leans very far indeed to
virtue’s side.

All honor and love to dear old Santa Claus! May his stay in our land be
long, and his pack grow every year more plethoric! And when, throughout
the broad earth, he shall find, on Christmas night, an entrance into
every home, and every heart throbbing with joyful gratitude at the
return of the blessed day that gave the Christ-child to a sinful world,
the reign of the Prince of Peace shall have begun below; everywhere
there shall be rendered, “Glory to God in the highest,” and “Good-will
to men” shall be the universal law--we shall all have _become as little
children_.


C. S. WESTCOTT & CO.,

Printers,

_No. 79 John Street, N. Y._