His eye fell upon the gudgeon lying on the grass. He picked them up,
and called out, "Wilhelm." A soldier in a white cap appeared. He threw
the fish towards him.
"Fry these little animals for me at once, while they are still alive
and kicking. They will be delicious."
Then he began smoking again.
[Illustration]
_Babies._
It is what a simple young writer once called "a beautiful truism" that
baby is one of oldest subjects in the world--indeed, it is almost
as old as man--and yet it has seldom or never been treated with
completeness. No doubt one reason for that is the fact that baby has
never been able to make itself heard except in inarticulate cries, and
no doubt also another reason is that people in general have not been
until lately interested in any babies but their own.
The difference between ancient and modern times is remarkable in
nothing more than in the treatment of babies. Human life, merely as
such, was considered less sacred then than now, and the average view
of the baby was simply utilitarian. Was the baby, male or female, a
healthy baby? Was it likely to become a sturdy citizen or a stout
soldier, or to be the capable mother of strong children? Then let the
baby live. Babies that did not satisfy these conditions were disposed
of much as we dispose of superfluous puppies or kittens. And not even
now, moreover, is baby life considered throughout all the world as
something in itself delightful and valuable. Savage people and tribes
are not such sinners in this regard as half-civilised nations like
those of India and China.
"What is the use of rearing daughters?" asked an intelligent Chinaman
not long ago of an inquiring Englishman. "When young they are only an
expense, and when grown they marry and go away. Whereas a son----."
What a world of difference there is between that sentiment and this of
"A Cradle Song," a recent poem by the young poet W. B. Yeats, where the
mother addresses her baby thus:--
"I kiss you and kiss you, my arms round my own;
Ah! how I shall miss you, my dear, when you're grown!"
To us, in these later times, and with all the sentiments of Christian
civilisation fostered in us, it is almost incomprehensible that any
grown human beings could have the heart to extinguish the first
struggling life of babies; most of all does it seem incomprehensible
that the mother, whose nature is wont to well up and flow out at the
first helpless cry of her infant, and the father, whose instinct is to
hover over and protect and "fend for" both mother and child in their
weakness, could ever surrender, or with their own hands destroy, the
creature whom they have brought into the world. But, strong as are the
natural instincts, stronger still in many is religious fanaticism,
stronger is a national or tribal tradition. And when we consider that
it has taken ages of Christian culture and feeling to bring us to our
present height of imaginative sympathy with all forms of life, till now
we are agreed that no more beautiful, sacred, or divine sight is to be
seen under the sun than that of a mother with a child in her arms, then
we can understand that, while it is an outrage, a sin, and a crime to
destroy a child among the taught of Christendom, it is but a hideous
barbarism among the uninstructed of heathendom.
Turning to consider particularly the treatment of babies in various
lands, by various peoples and tongues, we are compelled to note that
even where infanticide or "exposure" is not practised, a similar result
is worked out through the hardships--sometimes unconscious, sometimes
designed--of infant life. The conditions of existence among many savage
tribes are so severe that only the "fittest," the sturdiest, and
wiriest constitutions can survive. There is, for instance, a very fine
and intelligent tribe of blacks in the neighbourhood of the Cameroons,
named the Duallas, which imposes from the first a very violent test
upon the constitutions of their offspring. Like the ancient Germans,
the Duallas take a child when only four or five days old and plunge
it in the river. This is repeated every day till the child is strong
and hardy enough to bathe itself, or till it has succumbed beneath the
treatment. Other less intelligent and more savage tribes of Africans
train their children to endure torture from a very early age. Even the
average nursing of the negro mother is enough to try the toughness of
the child's constitution. When the child is being fed he is set astride
his mother's hip; and he must hold on how he can and get what nutriment
he can, while his mother moves about her ordinary duties. When he is
not thus attached to his mother he lies on a little bed of dried grass
on the ground, in all the simplicity in which Nature brought him into
the world, and crams himself with earth or whatever he can lay his
little black hands on.
[Illustration: +Red indian "papooses"+:]
Akin to the negro's treatment of children--though considerably in
advance as regards tenderness and picturesqueness--is that of the Red
Indians of North America. The father and mother combine to make a very
curious and ornamental close cradle or bed for the "papoose." In shape
it is not unlike the long oval shield of the Zulu. The father cuts it
out of wood or stout bark with his tomahawk and scalping-knife, and
covers it with deer or buffalo skin, or, if he has not these, with
matting or the softest bark of trees, leaving the upper side loose and
open. The mother then adorns and embroiders it with beads and grasses,
and lines and pads it with the softest grass or moss or rags she can
find. The "papoose" is lightly strapped in with soft thongs fastened
to the board and passing under his arms, and then the covering is
laced over him as one laces up a shoe, and nothing but the face of
the "papoose" is left exposed. Thus done up, baby can be hung (with
a thong attached to his cradle) on the branch of a tree, or from the
pole of the wigwam, or set in a corner out of the way. It may seem to
us that the close confinement and the upright position of these nests
cannot be very comfortable, but it is said that after tumbling about
a while on the grass or among the dogs of the wigwam the Indian baby
frequently cries to go back to his solitary nest. In this wise, too,
is he carried, slung over his mother's back, when the tribe is on the
march. The oval thing we have described is the prevalent pattern of
cradle among American Indians, though in the extreme north or in the
extreme south modifications of the style obtain. The Flat-head mother,
for instance, makes her papoose into a round bundle, with folds of
bark and thongs of deer-skin, and carries it in a wooden receptacle
something like a canoe, slung on her back, with a little pent-house or
shade projecting over the baby's face.
[Illustration: +A Flat-head Mother.+]
It is worth noting that this complete swaddling of infants is almost
universal among both barbarous and civilised peoples who dwell in
sub-tropical or temperate climates. It is done not so much (or not
only) to keep the child warm, but to prevent it from scratching itself,
from moving about and hurting itself, and from bruising itself or
breaking its tender bones if it should chance to fall. A baby, however,
that is done up tight and flat as a Red-skin baby is, must be almost
as safe on a top-shelf as on the ground. The close swaddling and
padding of baby is found, the more we consider it, to be the fashion
among both civilised and barbarous kindreds, and peoples, and tongues,
where women are very hard-worked. It is easy to understand how that
must be. When the mother digs and plants the soil, and grinds the corn,
draws the water and cooks the food for her husband and children--as
does the savage woman of every clime--when she spins and brews, and
makes and mends, and cooks and cleans, as does the house-wife of almost
every degree in almost every country of Europe; when the mother has
thus her hands full of toil or occupation from morning till night,
and when the expense or the convenience of a nurse is not available,
what can she do, what must she do, with baby, but contrive some means
of keeping him from troubling her and at the same time from damaging
himself? Therefore the American Indian papoose is bound and laced in
the thing we have seen; therefore the Amazon Indian child is slung
in a close net-like hammock from tree to tree; therefore the New
Guinea child hangs like a bunch of onions in a bag-net either from a
jutting bamboo of his father's hut or on his mother's back by a strap
passed across the forehead; and therefore the European baby of several
countries is wrapped and padded in the ways we are about to describe.
[Illustration: A GERMAN BABY.]
[Illustration: "BABY WAS FOUND ASLEEP IN THE SNOW."]
Of all house-wives in Europe, probably the German is the hardest
worked, and of all European mothers the German practises most
completely the art of swathing and padding her baby, and of putting it
on the shelf. The German baby is swaddled in a long, narrow pillow,
which is made to meet completely round him, being tucked up over his
feet and turned under his solemn chin. Three bands of gay blue ribbons
are then passed round the whole bundle and tied in large, florid bows
about where his chest, his waist, and his ankles may be supposed to
be. In this guise he can be deposited as an ornament either on the
sumptuous best bed, or on the kitchen dresser, or on the drawing-room
table. How fond the Germans are of this presentment of baby may be
guessed from the fact that it figures largely in their picture-books,
among their dolls, and even in the bakers' shops at Easter-time, made
of dough and covered with sugar to be devoured by greedy live babies.
[Illustration: "A VERY QUEER FISH."]
The German mother has the completest confidence in the safety of her
baby when swaddled thus. But the confidence is sometimes betrayed by
the wrappage, as witnesseth the following story. A party of peasants
set out for the christening of a new baby, the baby being swaddled
and wrapped in the usual manner. The way was long to the church, and
the weather was cold; indeed, snow lay on the ground. The anxiety
of the christening over, the whole party--parents, sponsors, and
friends--adjourned to the village inn to warm and cheer themselves with
_schnaps_, or what the Londoner terms "a drop of something short." They
then set off on their return home lightly and gaily, and their hearts
being merry within them they essayed a snatch or two of song and a
step or two of dance. Home at length was reached, and the interesting
christened bundle was laid on the table. The whole party--parents,
sponsors, and friends--stared agape and in silence; there was the
pillow, the ribbons, and the bows all complete, but where was the baby?
Someone ventured to raise the bundle; it was quite limp and empty! Baby
was gone! Back the whole party hurried on its lonely track, and baby
was found asleep in the snow, about midway between the church and the
village. He was a sturdy child, and the story runs that he escaped with
a violent sneeze or two, which, it is said, the anxious parents strove
to allay by popping him into the oven. There can be no doubt that the
German child that could survive the pillow, and the snow, and the oven,
must have been sturdy indeed.
Like the German mother in her treatment of infants is the Austrian--the
real Austrian, that is, who is of Teutonic origin; for the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy includes so many nationalities, so many
kindreds and peoples and tongues, that it would need a whole article
to write of them all. And like also, with a curious difference, is the
Swedish and Norwegian mother. The Swedish child, or _barn_--(compare
the Yorkshire _barn_, and the Scottish _bairn_)--is swaddled in more
complex fashion than the German. It is wound about with six-inch-wide
bandages, sometimes with the arms free and sometimes not, sometimes
the legs included in the whole bundle, but usually swathed separately.
The bandages are traditionally supposed to make the limbs and figure
grow straight. The bandaged _barn_ is then wrapped in a pillow and
tied about with ribbons and bows like the German child, except that
frequently his arms are free and his legs are shortly and stoutly
suggested by the tucking in of the pillow. After that he may be
fastened flatwise to another pillow, and slung perpendicularly from
a supple pole stuck in the wall, so that he looks like a very queer
fish indeed, fit to be shown outside the shop of an angling-tackle
maker. Like the German, the Swedish child always wears a cap, which
is borderless and of special fineness for its first Sunday, when it
is christened. Then, also, it wears beads upon its neck, and gorgeous
garments with gay bows of ribbon, all which are provided by the
godmother. In the remoter parts of both Sweden and Norway it is still
the custom every Sunday to carry these swaddled infants to church,
which is probably a long way off. They are not taken _into_ church,
however, but buried for warmth in the snow, in which a small hole is
left for them to breathe through.
In less primitive parts of Sweden and Norway, however, and among the
better-off, the pillow-bundle often gives place to a wooden cradle,
shaped like a trough or a French _baquet_, which is usually suspended
by a spiral spring from the roof. The elastic motion can scarcely be
of the most delightful kind to baby we should think, for there is
nothing to prevent the cradle from spinning or twisting round at its
will, and so producing dizziness. In Russia, too, a similar cradle
is used--contrived, however, more rudely as to both structure and
motion. It is an oblong box or wicker basket, with a cord from each of
its four corners converging to the hook or the rafter from which it
is hung, and with a looped cord underneath, in which the mother puts
her foot to swing her baby. In winter--which in Russia is long and
severe--the cradles or, sometimes, the hammocks in which the youngest
children sleep are slung round the great stove upon which the parents
and other adult members of the family pass the night, wrapped in their
sheep-skins.
[Illustration: +A Swedish Cradle.+]
[Illustration: FRENCH BABY--OLD STYLE.]
France is the only other country in which the pillow is a necessary
complement of the baby. But the attachment of the two is nowadays
characteristically French. It is a compromise between the old and
the new, between tradition and fashion, and consequently it is not
universal. The French baby (especially on gala days) is laid upon the
pillow, and his fine frocks and gay ribbons, instead of enveloping his
tender body, are spread upon him as he lies, so that he is no more
than a kind of _bas-relief_. In France, however, it must be noted
there came earlier than elsewhere in Europe--(one of the results of
the Revolution)--the revolt against mere tradition and usage in the
treatment of babies. Among well-to-do and aristocratic French folk,
in particular, a change in that regard has long been in progress. The
French child used to have always its pillow or cradle; now it begins to
lie upon a fresh, wholesome bed, neither of wool nor of feathers, but
of hair or straw, or among country or sea-faring folk of sweet dried
fern or bracken or pungent-smelling sea-weed; and Government bureaux
circulate among the peasants such directions as these:--"Lay the infant
to sleep on its right side; avoid putting it to sleep in the lap before
putting it in bed." The French baby used to wear a multiplicity of
caps--a small close cap of fine linen, over which was a second of light
flannel, and over that a third of some light and ornamental stuff;
now the caps are being discarded, and baby goes openly and baldly
bareheaded. There is, however, one infantile institution to which
well-to-do French folk cling obstinately, and that is the foster-mother
or wet-nurse. The institution had its origin ages ago, and was
popular with other than fine ladies who feared to spoil their shape
with nursing. It was under the early Bourbon kings that the practice
first became established of sending infants into the country, to some
well-known dependant of the house, to be nursed and fed and brought up.
That is why one reads so much in French literature of foster-brothers
and foster-sisters, who were the peasant children brought up in the
same lap, and at the same breast as the young lords and ladies.
The wet-nurse who lived in the family was--and is still--commonly
a Burgundian, an ample, handsome, and good-natured type of woman,
something like our own woman of Devonshire. The fine Burgundian nurse
is still a feature of Parisian life, with her black eyes, her rich
colour, and her opulent form, her red cloak, her full-bordered cap,
and her long, floating ribbons. It is evident that this large and
productive type is very old, for there is a curious statute in ancient
French law, called the "_droit de douze enfants_:" it obtained only in
Burgundy, and it enacted that all parents of a dozen children should be
exempt from the payment of any taxes whatever.
[Illustration: A BURGUNDIAN NURSE.]
[Illustration: +A Chinese mother & child+:]
Before we finally turn, whither we have all this while been tending,
to the completest and wholesomest treatment of babies, let us note one
or two remarkable curiosities in that way. There is, first of all,
the well-worn, and now almost out-worn, tradition that Chinese female
babies have their feet tortured by tight bandaging to make and keep
them small. That practice, let us say at once, was never prevalent,
except in very high society--like really tight-lacing in England--and
even there it is now gradually becoming obsolete. But, among the
sweltering millions of China there is a practice which seems to have
a curious result. The mother carries her infant in a kind of bag or
pannier on her back, and not--as in other countries where the dorsal
carriage is affected--with the face turned outwards, but--as, probably,
we ought to expect in China, where everything seems to go and come
by the rule of contraries--with the face turned inwards. The result
of that is that the baby's nose is of necessity pressed against its
mother's back, whence, no doubt, say the learned in these matters,
has been evolved, in the course of ages, the peculiarly flattened or
blunted nose, characteristic of the Chinaman. Furthermore, Chinese
girls, even when allowed to live, are little thought of. In the family
generally they bear no names: they are known as Number One or Number
Two, like convicts, and they are no more reckoned members of the family
than the cat or the dog. So when a Chinaman is asked what family he
has, he counts only his boys. And a boy is treated with great honour
and ceremony by the women. When he is four months old, he is set for
the first time in a chair, and his mother's mother sends or brings
him many presents, notably among which is sugar-candy. The candy is
emblematic of the sweet things of life, and it is stuck to the chair to
signify the hope that he may never lack such things. His first birthday
is the second great day of rejoicing. He is then set upon a table in
front of many things, such as ink, books, tools, &c., and whichever he
first lays his hand on decides his future occupation.
It is an odd thing that by no people on earth are children--both girls
and boys--treated with more affection and indulgence than by the island
neighbours of the Chinese--the Japanese, namely; and no children have
a greater abundance of toys and amusements. It must, however, be said
that the fondness and patience of Japanese parents are reciprocated by
the love and obedience of their children. Both father and mother are
equally devoted to their offspring. The mother commonly carries her
baby slung in front of her, and when she is tired the father cheerfully
accepts the burden; but fathers and mothers, and elder sisters and
brothers may often be seen in the gay, sunny streets of Tokio or
Yokohama giving pick-a-backs to delighted, crowing babies. The Japanese
baby, moreover, is not only indulged, he is also treated with the
greatest care and intelligence. He is judiciously fed; he is regularly
bathed either at home or in the public bath-houses; and his skin is
stimulated and his health hardened by his being frequently plunged in
a cold stream, or even in the snow. A Japanese baby would appear to us
a very droll creature. If you would know how he looks you have only to
examine a well-made Japanese doll. He has his head shaved, with the
exception of four tufts of hair--one in front, one behind, and one
over either ear. He wears bright and gaudy clothes (or did wear; for
children, like their parents, sad to say, are gradually being arrayed
in European fashion), and his loose jacket has very long and very wide
sleeves. Very poor children go barefoot; others wear stockings and
clogs, the stockings having a separate pocket for the big toe.
[Illustration: +Some Japanese Children+:]
To find other children as well, wisely, and wholesomely treated as
children are in Japan, we must come to an English home, with a look
in by the way at an American home, where, it is said by many, the
child is made somewhat too much of, and therefore spoiled. But it
must be sorrowfully admitted that it is only the child of well-to-do
or cultured parents in Great Britain that is as well and wisely cared
for, and that is as happy as the child of Japan: there is no doubt that
the average of childish comfort and happiness is very much greater
in Japan than in England. Yet a well-ordered English home is baby's
paradise. There he is not swathed in bandages and rolled in a pillow
and crowned with a nightcap; he is kept always clean and sweet, he
is lightly but sufficiently clothed, and he is allowed to kick, and
crow, and grow strong as much as ever he likes. He is no longer put
to bed in a deep wooden cradle set on wooden rockers, but in a light
and airy bassinette, which either is stationary or swings lightly upon
hooks. That question of stationary or moving bassinette has become
somewhat vexed among mothers, many doctors favouring the opinion that
it is neither necessary nor desirable that infants should be sent to
sleep with rocking or swinging. The old rocking cradle had a much more
fearsome motion than the swinging bassinette. Rocked by a careless or
energetic person it would often make the baby ill; indeed, there used
to be a tradition among humble mothers (a tradition which still obtains
in Scotland) that if the cradle was rocked when empty the baby would
certainly be ill when next put into it. The rocking cradle with its
great wooden hood has had its day (and how magnificent the height of
its day was may be guessed from the cradle of James I. that was shown
in the Stuart Exhibition)--it has had its day, and is now departing
into the limbo of things obsolete and forgotten, and thither probably
in the course of years the swinging bassinette will follow it.
We have in this article treated of babies only when they are
inarticulate, when none but the mother or the constant nurse can
understand them. That is commonly reckoned by the stranger or the mere
male person the least interesting age of all, but to the mother--and,
indeed, to all women and grown girls--it is the most interesting.
Then the baby's clinging helplessness, its wide stare of wonder, and
its bright, human smile and crow of response to a kind look or tone,
suffuse the female heart with an unimaginable delight. What pride is
felt in the health and beauty and weight of the baby! ("Here's a leg
for a babe of a week!" says the doctor in Tennyson's "Grandmother.")
How his active crawling is admired!--and sometimes his singular taste
for buttons, and marbles, and cinders! With what wonder and gratulation
is the appearance of his first tooth hailed! With what expressions
of joy is attention called to his first attempts at walking, and how
"dear" he is when he first goes "pattering over the boards!" But
beyond and beneath all these common phenomena the earliest infancy has
ravishing mysteries which only the mother can patiently watch, and pore
over, and understand. Every day, every hour brings to her a new joy,
of which she can speak to no one; for that which no else one sees--the
waking attention, the dawning reason--the mother sees, and that which
no one else hears the mother hears.
[Illustration]
"_On the Stump for the Pump._"
+By Sir Wilfrid Lawson.+
[Illustration]
"The Editor of +The Strand+ asks Sir W. Lawson to send him an article
with some such title as 'Thirty Years of Temperance Advocacy,' or 'On
the Stump for the Pump.'"
You ask me to write "On the Stump for the Pump,"
Don't you think 'twould be better, "The Pump on the Stump?"
Sure that "pump" should be able a tale to unfold,
For you hint in your letter it's thirty years old!
Just think of one pumping for thirty long years,
And the water scarce yet has got up to their ears.
Yet while water's so hard to the right pitch to rise,
The full tide of beer mounts quite up to our eyes.
There is Goschen, and Randolph, and Booth, and old Smith,
Men of fame and renown, and great vigour and pith,
They come with their brooms, and they come with their mops,
And they labour and sweep, but the tide never stops.
Away in the torrent go virtue and wealth,
Peace, plenty, and happiness, order and health,
And "Bung" with a chuckle cries, "Pump as you may,
But beer and the brewer still carry the day."
Now you kindly have asked me to say what I think
On this troublesome, terrible question of drink.
So the "Pump" will endeavour to pour something out,
A "pump" at the least should be able to "spout!"
Well, well, I must hope that I shall not quite fail,
So the "Pump," as you've asked him, will pour out his tale.
Almost everyone who proposes a toast at a public dinner commences his
speech by saying that he feels himself to be the most unfit person who
could have been selected to perform the duty.
In this matter I am neither the most fit, nor the most unfit person to
give such a narrative as the Editor desires. There are many advocates
of temperance still living who have addressed far more audiences on the
subject than I have done, and whose account of their experience would
be far more interesting and instructive than mine can be.