I WAS apparently expected, for, as I have been credibly informed, an
extensive wardrobe had been prepared for me, and a whole drawer in the
bureau appropriated for its storage. The said wardrobe consisted of
several long sacerdotal robes, of the finest cambric; a dozen or more
very unsacerdotal looking nether garments of linen and cambric, ruffled
and trimmed with thread lace; a number of gowns of rich material; also
a couple of flannel skirts, heavily embroidered, and seemingly intended
only to tangle the feet; and quite a pile of unmentionables, with
necessary fastenings.
There was also an elegant India muslin robe, trimmed with embroidery
and fretted with lace, and a handsome lace cap, laid apart to
themselves. These, as I afterwards learned, were intended for my
baptismal suit.
I have thus particularized, because I am rather proud of having come
into property so early.
One blustering night in the latter part of March I arrived, invaded
the wardrobe, and appeared next morning on a pillow of state, ready
to receive company. My appearance could not have been excessively
prepossessing, as I formed no exception to the usual standard of
æsthetic attainment exhibited by the little red monsters of my age.
My hair was very thin and peach-fuzzy; eyes of uncertain hue, and
apparently disgusted with the world and its sights, if we may judge
from the persistency with which they kept the puffy, lashless lids
closed; a dusty little forehead, that wrinkled so much when the eyes
did open that one would suppose I had seen trouble, and “had losses”
in the world from which I had so recently come; my mouth, purple and
projecting with the upper lip, while the under lip was sucked in,
after the most approved directions for pronouncing the Greek _phi_.
The sleeves of my wrapper were rather too long (the usual fault in our
first clothes, arising, perhaps, from the fact that while they are in
process of construction there is no opportunity of trying them on us),
and were rolled up around my tight-closed fists, which kept digging
into my eyes with prize-fighting pertinacity.
The day following my advent being Sunday, and the place of my birth
being in the country, many of the neighbors dropped in to see Mrs.
Smith and the baby. All went through the same programme.
“How d’ye do, Mrs. Smith; I hope you came through well; but then this
is your first. There’s nothing like getting used to it. And where’s the
little dear?”
And without waiting for my mother’s replies and thanks, they would
turn to the nurse holding me in her lap on the pillow, and removing
the wrapping from my face as carefully as if it were a bird, and
would fly out, they would gaze at me mesmerically, cluck to me with
a perseverance undamped by the want of effect, and finally turn away
with the defiant assertion that I was the perfect image of both my
parents; an assertion which would have been at least debatable, from
the fact that my father was very dark in complexion and feature, and
my mother very fair. Some even insisted on holding me, the spinster
visitors being particularly desirous of this privilege; and getting me
in their laps, they would examine the tightness of my clothing, and the
temperature of my skin, with the well assumed criticism of experience.
And if one found, on thrusting her hands beneath my clothes, that my
feet were cold, most proudly and complacently she would unfold my
garments, and expose my little splotched limbs to the fire. My feet and
legs must have looked very pitiful indeed, sticking out of a wilderness
of flannel like two slim beets, crossing each other with their little
flat soles, as if I was born to be a tailor!
When the visitors were gone my father would come and gaze long and
steadily into my face, then anxiously suggest that something must be
the matter with me, because I was lying so still; and my mother would
call for me to be brought to her, and after innumerable fixings,
adjusting the cloth over my face this way, turning my head that way,
hiding the point of one pin, pulling out another, straightening this
and that fold of a garment—after all these nervousnesses, peculiar to
young mothers, I would be found to be sleeping soundly; and then mother
would regale herself with a long conversation between us, though it is
more than probable she monopolized the talking.
But as my presence, so important to one household, had no effect
whatever upon the old monarch of the glass and scythe, the days still
managed to glide by, and with the crying spell at the morning bath, the
troublesome feeding, father’s fidgets and mother’s anxiety, I arrived
at the first era in baby life—_noticing_. What an important period!
How many things were tried to attract my attention! Father whistled
and clucked his mouth almost away; Aunt Hannah, my nurse, coming with
my bottle, would tinkle on it with her thimble and sputter her lips to
draw my blinking eyes towards her, and mother shook, successively and
constantly, all her different bunches of keys over my face, in the vain
endeavor to discover my favorite. Unconscious I, all the while lying on
my back, vacantly staring to see the sounds. Mother now being able to
sit up, it was her constant delight to have me in her lap, treating me
as if I were a doll, and she a girl of ten; trying vainly to part and
brush my scanty hair, making me sit up, while she kept my limber neck
steady with one careful hand; and wearing my palms out teaching me to
“patty cake.” And such air castles as she would build for me! Telling
me with as much emphasis as if I understood it all, and with each word,
giving me a soft peck on the cheek with her forefinger.
“Never mind, tweetness! we’ll do ‘way from this old country house soon,
and live in the town, and then, oh! the putty things Johnnie will have!
A putty ‘ittle tarriage and a g’eat big yocking horse, with a long
mane and tail, and a ‘ittle g’een wagon, and a ‘ittle black dog, and
ah! so many, many putties for a tweet ‘ittle boy.” Then chattering my
chin in her ecstasy of love, till the titillation made me draw my face
into a shape that might, by a very wide stretch of the imagination, be
called a smile, she would scream for father to witness my display of
intelligence. He, of course, would not believe it till I was chattered
again; but instead of the laugh, the concussion of my gums would
produce such plaintive wails that mother would apologise, with all
the pleonasm of baby talk, and soothingly request me to “there, then,
darling!”
My extreme youth prevented me from seeing the exact philosophy of
“there then-ing” under pain, and I would continue my vocale till
something more palatable to baby taste than baby talk would stop my
mouth, and sleep’s gentle wing would fan away my tears.
How long would a mother’s patience watch my slumbers while she mused
on the strange responsibility of her position! A soul given to her to
form for good or evil; the potter’s clay placed in her hands to make
a vessel unto honor or dishonor! How fervent her prayer: “O, Father,
guide me to guide him!”
What an impostor is the slumbering babe! His tiny hand, resting in
dimpled fairness on your breast, seems to lift the veil of Futurity,
and open to your view the brightest paths of flowery beauty, down which
his feet shall patter with the innocence of childhood, run with the
eager ambition of youth, stride with the honors of manhood, and totter
with the feebleness of old age into the grave o’er which towers the
marble tribute of a nation’s love. Were the real curtain lifted, and
Life’s true pathway shown, how Earth’s timid ones would shrink from its
thorns and poisons, its bubble hopes and bitter cups. Thank God the
Future is hidden, but the promise stands: “As thy days are, so shall
thy strength be.”