not a commander who made allowances far time, distance, weather, or
anything else. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or
mot. And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics,
and that was the double-quick. He treated you with every sort of
insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn’t dare to say a
word. You could face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give
back blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your
hair, and twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of
war were sounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries,
and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his
war-whoop you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of the
chance, too. When he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw
out any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer
and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered his pap-
bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went to
work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as
to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was
right–three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the
colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those hiccoughs. I can taste
that stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you went along!
Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying
that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are
whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin–simply wind on the
stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual
hour, two o’clock in the morning, didn’t you rise up promptly and remark,
with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-school book much,
that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh!
you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down
the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby-
talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing!–” Rock-a-
by baby in the treetop,” for instance. What a spectacle for an Army of
the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the neighbors, too; for it is
not everybody within a mile around that likes military music at three in
the morning: And when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or
three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing suited
him like exercise and noise, what did you do? [“Go on!”] You simply went
on until you dropped in the last ditch. The idea that a baby doesn’t
amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full
by itself. One baby can furnish more business than you and your whole
Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible,
brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you can’t make him
stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long
as you are in your right mind don’t you ever pray for twins. Twins
amount to a permanent riot. And there ain’t any real difference between
triplets and an insurrection.
Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of
the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty years
from now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still
survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republic
numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our
increase. Our present schooner of State will have grown into a political
leviathan–a Great Eastern. The cradled babies of to-day will be on
deck. Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract
on their hands. Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in
the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred