And how many things you learned as you went along! Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying, that when a 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. I like 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 ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot; and there ain't any real difference between triplets and insurrections.
Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land there are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are. For in one of these cradles the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething; in another the future great historian is lying, and doubtless he will continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended. And in still one more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment, to trying to find out some way to get his own big toe into his mouth, an achievement to which (meaning no disrespect) the illustrious guest of this evening also turned his attention some fifty-six years ago! And if the child is but the prophecy of the man, there are mighty few will doubt that he succeeded.
THE OCCASIONAL POEM
CHARLES DICKENS
Read by Mr. Watson in New York, at the celebration of the Dickens
Centenary, 1912. Reprinted from the public press.
BY WILLIAM WATSON
When Nature first designed
In her all-procreant mind
The man whom here tonight we are met to honor—
When first the idea of Dickens flashed upon her—
"Where, where" she said, "upon my populous earth
Shall this prodigious child be brought to birth?
Where shall we have his earliest wondering look
Into my magic book?
Shall he be born where life runs like a brook,
Pleasant and placid as of old it ran,
Far from the sound and shock of mighty deeds,
Among soft English meads?
Or shall he first my pictured volume scan
Where London lifts its hot and fevered brow
For cooling night to fan?"
"Nay, nay," she said, "I have a happier plan
For where at Portsmouth, on the embattled tides
The ships of war step out with thundering prow
And shake their stormy sides—
In yonder place of arms, whose gaunt sea wall
Flings to the clouds the far-heard bugle call—
He shall be born amid the drums and guns,
He shall be born among my fighting sons,
Perhaps the greatest warrior of them all."
II
So there, where from the forts and battle gear
And all the proud sea babbles Nelson's name,
Into the world this later hero came—
He, too, a man that knew all moods but fear—
He, too, a fighter. Yet not his the strife
That leaves dark scars on the fair face of life.
He did not fight to rend the world apart;
He fought to make it one in mind and heart,
Building a broad and noble bridge to span
The icy chasm that sunders man from man.
Wherever wrong had fixed its bastions deep,
There did his fierce yet gay assault surprise
Some fortress girt with lucre or with lies;
There his light battery stormed some ponderous keep;
There charged he up the steep,
A knight on whom no palsying torpor fell,
Keen to the last to break a lance with Hell.
And still undimmed his conquering weapons shine;
On his bright sword no spot of rust appears,
And still across the years
His soul goes forth to battle, and in the face
Of whatso'er is false, or cruel, or base,
He hurls his gage and leaps among the spears,
Being armed with pity and love and scorn divine,
Immortal laughter and immortal tears.