Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/91

 leapfrog with his boys in the parlor, to the utter bewilderment of all the rest of the family; and, when his wife expostulates, embraces and kisses her with a fervor that reminds her of the early years lang syne; laughs at dyspepsia; bids the mully-grubs good-by; dismisses his doctor; cracks a mot at the expense of the cemetery man; outwits his peers on change; dances the polka with his head-clerk to the can-can tune of Offenbach's "Duchess of Gerolstein;" enjoys life with a rush, generally, and swears he cannot die for laughing! So much for oxygen, inhaled as it only ought to be, — naturally.

Now, look at these other pictures: One is the babe of parents, fast, fond and foolish, as ever drew breath; hence their child's first practical lesson is to have a holy horror of fresh air, sunshine, — not a hand's breadth of which ever falls on its pretty face lest it get tanned, and some fool declare its grandfather must have been an American citizen of African descent, — and cold water. Out on such folly! The poor child is gasping for God's free air; and its pale lips and sunken blue eyes, white, delicate, semilucent skin, narrow chest, and cramped soul and body, are so many eloquent protests against baby-cide, and pleadings for more light, air, life; more backing against the croup, measles, scarlatina, fevers, worms, wastings, weazenness, and precocity, to which all baby life is exposed, and which it must meet, conquer, or die itself.

Instead of exercising common sense, the child is padded on the outside, and stuffed and crammed with sweets, cakes, pies, candies, and a host of other abominations, all of which diminish its chances for health, and tend directly to ripen it prematurely, so that at ten years of age, if it lives that long, it is perfectly well posted in certain baleful school habits, which I have elsewhere stated is the same, that in Scripture is denounced. In plain words, I refer to self-pollution. Look now at another baby, the child of yonder Irish woman, clad, it is true, in coarse raiment; whose poverty won't afford pies, or such trash, but only the coarsest kind of food, which is, however, most deliciously seasoned with that richest of all condiments, — hunger. But poor as she undoubtedly is in this world's goods, she is richer than a queen in real wealth; for she is contented with her lot, by reason of robust health, itself the result of labor, and supremely blest and happy in her glorious but