Sleep, baby, sleep!
Thy father guards his sheep,
Thy mother shakes the dreamland-tree
Down fall the little dreams for thee,
Sleep, baby, sleep!
Sleep, baby, sleep!
Our Saviour loves His sheep.
He is the Lamb of God on high,
Who for our sakes came down to die.
Sleep, baby, sleep!
The pretty German lullaby rises unbidden, and is pushed away by the quick, sad thoughts that will not listen to it. For under all the laughter and nursery frolic and happiness, we cannot but remember why these little ones are here. Round about the compound in a great triangle there are three Temple towers. They are out of sight though near us, but we cannot forget they are there. They stand for that which deprives these children of their birthright. Oh for the day when those Temple towers will fall and the reign of righteousness begin! There was a time when it seemed impossible to desire that the fire should be allowed to touch the stately and beautiful things of the world. Now there is something that satisfies as nothing else could in the vision of that purifying fire; and the promise that stands out like a light in the darkness is that which tells that the Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom, all things that offend.
Higher Critics
In the tiny babies' nursery many a crooning Indian lullaby is sung to the babies in their swinging white cradles; but in the Taraha nursery we sing sweet old hymns, in Tamil and English, and then all sensible people are supposed to go to sleep. But one evening after the singing, two little tots settled down for a talk. Said one lying comfortably on her back with her two hands clasped behind her head: "Who takes care of us at night when we all go to sleep?" Said the other in a mixture of Tamil and English: "Jesus-tender-Shepherd takes care of us—Jesus-loves-me-this-I-know." The first baby rolled over upon her small sister with a crow of derision. "It is not! It is Accal! I woke one night and saw her!" The other baby insisted she was making a mistake. "Accal sleeps, all people sleep; they lie down like us and go to sleep. Only Jesus stays awake, and never, never goes to sleep." "Never, never?" questioned the first, and was quiet for a minute considering the matter; then with a sceptical little laugh, "Did you ever wake up and see Him?"
If the babies were always in a state of calm repose, the Taraha's pet name, Parrot-house, would be inappropriate: but for nearly ten hours of the day they are awake and talkative. Talk, however, is a mild word by which to describe their powers of conversation. Sometimes we wonder if they never tire of chattering, and then we remember they have only lately learned to talk. They have not had time to tire.
CHILDREN WADING
Once we listened, hoping that the trailing clouds of glory so recently departed had left some trace of illumination in this their first expression in earth's language of their feelings and emotions. But we found them very mundane. Most of the conversation concerned their "saman," a comprehensive Indian word used by people with limited vocabularies to express all manner of things to play with. Their "saman" was various. Dolls, of course, and the remnants of dolls; tins and the lids thereof; bits of everything which could break; corks, stones, seeds, half cocoa-nut shells; rags of many ages and colours; scraped down morsels of brick; withered flowers and leaves; sticks of all sorts and sizes; English Christmas cards, sometimes with much domestic information on the back; unauthorised sundries from the kindergarten—delivered up with a smile intended to assure you that they were only being kept for Sittie; and pûchies. Pûchies are insects. We have one baby who collects pûchies. "Look!" she said, one morning before prayers, "Deah little five pûchies!" and she opened her hand and five red and black beetles crawled slowly out, to the delight of the devout, who scrambled up from their orderly rows with shrieks of appreciation.
But if the babies' conversation was unenlightening, their chosen avocations are not uninteresting. They are always busy about something, and, from their point of view, something important. There are, of course, some among the thirty who are unimaginative and unenterprising. These sit in the sand and play. Others have more to do. Life to them is full of the unknown. The unknown is full of possibilities. The great thing is to experiment. Nothing is too insignificant to explore, and all five senses are useful to the thoroughly competent baby.
"Watching a Miracle"