Letters of Peregrine Pickle

by George P. Upton

[AURELIA'S BABY.]

IT is necessary I should say something about Aurelia's Baby, for it is the only baby in the whole world. At least Aurelia thinks so—just as any other mother thinks.

I suppose there never was a baby born into this vale of tears, that its mother did not suppose to be the only baby in the world. I suppose those poor women who were the mothers of Nero, Richard, Elizabeth, Robespierre, Marat, and the latest murderer who has expiated his villainies on the gallows-tree, thought the same thing, equally with the mothers of all good and blessed people. I see no good reason why they should not, for the birth of the first baby revolutionizes the world. The mother passes into a new sphere of being, illumined by other suns and stars, in which other flowers blossom and other birds sing, and the only inhabitants of which are she and the baby. All her great love centres in the baby, and where all her love centres, of course, there is her world. The whole world of the baby is limited by the boundaries of its mother's eyes. You may have noticed a baby lying in its nurse's arms, looking up into the sky with wide-staring, vacant eyes and blank face. It has no more intelligence in its face than a small kitten or any other sucking possibility. In the arms of a nurse, all babies are alike—merely breathing bits of blank vacancy—apple-dumplings, with plums for eyes, and stuffed with colic. But, change the scene, and place the baby in the arms of its mother, and, somehow, by some strange necromancy that passes between the two, some subtle link of affinity, that baby's face lights up with intelligence and its little white soul looks out of the eyes as it recognizes its world in the calm, holy eyes of the mother; for I think every mother's eyes, from Aurelia's to some wild Indian mother's, crooning strange weird lullabies under tropic palms, to her first born, are saintly when they gaze into the sweet face of the first baby. And I believe that the angels do not know such a love as exists between those two mortals.

Which reminds me to say that I think Eve's baby, which she named Cain, had the advantage of Aurelia's baby in some respects. The chronicles of that day do not show that the baby Cain was obliged to take soothing syrup, squills, or paregoric. There is no proof that the angels smiled at him or talked to him in his sleep, as they do to modern babies through the medium of colic. Cain could wander about at his own sweet will, without any danger of catching the whooping cough, measles, chicken-pox or any other of the contagious infantile necessities which have been imposed upon all coming babies by his mother's exploits in stealing and eating apples. Adam did not have to walk the floor o' nights, have his whiskers pulled out by the roots, or buy rattles and india-rubber rings. There isn't a line on record to show that the infantile Cain suffered from pins sticking into his blessed little legs and arms. I do not suppose that the old ladies of the neighborhood came in every day or so, and scared Eve's life out of her, by conjuring up all sorts of diseases, with all sorts of remedies and cheerful predictions that Cain would die young, although I think it would have been better for Cain if he had. Holy Writ does not show, again, that Cain was entrusted in his marsupial days, to the care of that curious compound of a gin bottle and a baby-tender, who has a profound contempt for the mother, knows more than all the rest of the world combined, and looks upon a physician as a foe to the human race. I do not suppose Cain was kissed within an inch of his life by prospective young mothers and youthful females, who have graduated from the doll stage of their existence, nor that he was rigged up in bib, pinafore, and ribbon, until he was purple in the face, with the point of one very sharp pin inserted into the end of his back, and placed on exhibition in a state of squalls and general disgust consequent upon the aforesaid point, which he could feel, if he couldn't see. The youthful Cain was not made the victim of the maternal meetings, and crammed with Watts' hymns, and chapters of the Bible before he was into his fig-leaf breeches—and right here, I suppose somebody will say he would have turned out better if he had been brought up in this manner, to which I might retort with the fact that Abel was not subjected to the cramming process either. Cain never bumped his precious little head by falling out of his crib. He could not fall out of the cradle of the beautiful white arms of the first mother, which encircled him with their zone of love, and which, I warrant you, yearned for him even when he wandered through the earth, with the brand upon his brow, and the stain upon his heart, and our common mother mourned in the depths of a triple agony. And it is to be recorded as one of the incidents of his early days, that Eve was a healthy woman, and he was not brought up on chalk and water, and did not ruin his small stomach with candy and sweetmeats, presented by injudicious, but kindly disposed people, whose generosity was only equalled by their stupidity.

I am getting away from Aurelia's baby somewhat, but there are still some analogies between Aurelia and Eve untouched upon, and, as I am writing this screed I will be obliged to you if you do not interrupt me again, but leave me to say my say in my own manner. I candidly confess to you that I don't know where this baby business will take me, or when I shall get through talking about it, but just at present I prefer to let the subject take me along at will. I had rather trust myself to babies, than some grown people who insist upon interruption.

After this necessary parenthetical defence of my rights, I may say that although the youthful Cain turned out very badly, I do not suppose that Eve—as she sat under the pleasant trees of Eden, and watched the little Cain playing in the flowers, while all the birds, as yet unharmed by man, came and sang to her—ever thought her first-born would be a murderer, or ever saw anything in his face, as he lay upon her bosom, but love and joy. For the good God never made anything ugly or bad. All that comes from his hand is perfect and beautiful. No human being, do I sincerely believe, is born absolutely ugly. The ugly man has made himself ugly. The ugly woman is at fault herself.