From that moment until the end of the ball the baby was the chief attraction of the evening. She cooed, laughed, waved her little hands and was passed round the hall until the last of the dancers was gone.
I was that baby. Let me explain how such an adventure came about.
It occurred in January, during a very severe winter. The thermometer registered forty degrees below zero. At that time my father, my mother, and my brothers lived on a farm about sixteen miles from Chicago. When the occasion of my appearance in the world was approaching, the temperature went so low that it was impossible to heat our house properly. My mother’s health naturally made my father anxious. He went accordingly to the village of Fullersburg, the population of which was composed almost exclusively of cousins and kinsmen, and made an arrangement with the proprietor of the only public-house of the place. In the general room there was a huge cast-iron stove. This was, in the whole countryside, the only stove which seemed to give out an appreciable heat. They transformed the bar into a sleeping-room and there it was that I first saw light. On that day the frost was thick on the window panes and the water froze in dishes two yards from the famous stove.
I am positive of all these details, for I caught a cold at the very moment of my birth, which I have never got rid of. On my father’s side I had a sturdy ancestry. I therefore came into life with a certain power of resistance, and if I have not been able to recover altogether from the effects of this initial cold, I have had the strength at all events to withstand them.
A month later we had returned to the farm, and the saloon resumed its customary appearance. I have mentioned that it was the only tavern in town, and, as we occupied the main room, we had inflicted considerable hardship upon the villagers, who were deprived of their entertainment for more than four weeks.
When I was about six weeks old a lot of people stopped one evening in front of our house. They were going to give a surprise party at a house about twenty miles from ours.
They were picking up everybody en route, and they stopped at our house to include my parents. They gave them five minutes in which to get ready. My father was an intimate friend of the people whom they were going to surprise; and, furthermore, as he was one of the best musicians of the neighbourhood he could not get out of going, as without him the company would have no chance of dancing. He accordingly consented to join the party. Then they insisted that my mother go, too.
“What will she do with the baby? Who will feed her?”
There was only one thing to do in these circumstances—take baby too.
My mother declined at first, alleging that she had no time to make the necessary preparations, but the jubilant crowd would accept no refusal. They bundled me up in a coverlet and I was packed into a sleigh, which bore me to the ball.