If he is the husband so good a wife and mother deserves to have, he will not only acknowledge his fault to you, but seek out little Tom in his lonely chamber, and with a fond kiss tell him that “Papa spoke shortly awhile ago, because he was very tired and had had a great deal to trouble him to-day, but that he will surely remember to bring him a famous great ball to-morrow night.”
There are times and circumstances in which it is very hard to remember that “babies will be babies.” Bessy, and Kitty, and Freddy are playing in the nursery adjoining your bedroom, where you lie in the agonies of “one of your headaches.” Every not-very-strong mother knows just what that means. You have told the little ones that you are in great pain, and having provided them with books, blocks, slates, and the like “sitting-still plays,” as Bessie calls them, and begging them to try and be quiet for half an hour, have withdrawn to your darkened retreat. They are loving, well-meaning children, and, for almost ten minutes, there is a refreshing season of calm. You are just forgetting torture in a soothing slumber, when, thump! bang! down comes the castle, the erection of which has kept Freddy still thus long. He would not be a boy if he did not hurrah at the crash; the girls laugh and clap their hands; and uproar is shortly the order of the hour. Don’t spring from your bed, and, confronting them with your pale face and bloodshot eyes, accuse them of disobedience and want of affection for you. They love you very dearly, and they “did mean to mind,” they will tell you penitently, “but they just forgot!”
It is baby-nature to be forgetful, and I am glad that it is. The injuries, and slights, and wounded feeling of maturer years are enough to make of memory a whip of scorpions. I am thankful that, with the child, a kiss, a smile, a kind word will efface the recollection of the hasty reproof, the cross look, or—I blush for human nature as illustrated in some women while I write it!—the impatient blow that has wrung blood from the tender little heart. Thank Heaven that babies have short memories! so short that the suffering of cutting one tooth is clean forgotten before the next saws its jagged edge through the swollen gum.
Furthermore, keep them babies so long as you can without making yourself and them ridiculous, and interfering with the graver duty of preparing them for their place in the working-world. The dew-drop must exhale by and by, but it lingers longest in the bosom of the flower that folds its petals most jealously and fondly above it. The virgin purity of the snow must change, with dust and melting, into the hue of the earth beneath; but it is a woeful sight. We would fain delay the process by every means in our power. Above all, let us make it our prayer that we may never forget that we were once children, and how we felt, reasoned, and acted then.
Who of us does not treasure in her casket of remembrance certain golden days or hours that we would not lose for the wealth of a kingdom? Your daughter leans against your knee, as my little five-year-old does on mine, with “Mamma, please tell me a story about when you were a little girl; how glad you were when your Papa brought you home a new doll, with blue eyes and curling hair, in place of the one the dogs tore up; or about the grand holidays you used to have in the woods; or how your Papa once took you to slide on the ice-pond—and O, Mamma! do tell me about all the Christmases you ever had!”
All the Christmases I ever had! I wish I could remember them, every one—for those I do recall are strung upon my memory like pearls upon a silken cord, and each is a joy forever. There is but one against which I have set a black cross—the dreadful morning when the first thing I drew from my stocking was a switch! I seem to see the lithe, keen, wicked-looking rod now, and hear the shout of laughter that greeted its appearance—mirth, that quickly subsided before my torrent of grief and shame. I was soon told that the obnoxious article was placed there “in fun,” by a visitor in the family.
I should like to see the visitor who should dare to practice such a piece of “fun” upon one of my children!
Never deny the babies their Christmas! It is the shining seal set upon a year of happiness. If the preparations for it—the delicious mystery with which these are invested; the solemn parade of clean, whole stockings in the chimney corner; or the tree, decked in secret, to be revealed in glad pomp upon the festal day—if these and many other features of the anniversary are tedious or contemptible in your sight, you are an object of pity; but do not defraud your children of joys which are their right, merely because you have never tasted them. Let them believe in Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas, or Kriss Kringle, or whatever name the jolly Dutch saint bears in your region. Some latter-day zealots, more puritanical than wise, have felt themselves called upon, in schools, and before other juvenile audiences, to deny the claims of the patron of merry Christmas to popular love and gratitude. Theirs is a thankless office; both parents and children feeling themselves to be aggrieved by the gratuitous disclosure, and this is as it should be. If it be wicked to encourage such a delusion in infant minds, it must be a transgression that leans very far indeed to virtue’s side.
All honor and love to dear old Santa Claus! May his stay in our land be long, and his pack grow every year more plethoric! And when, throughout the broad earth, he shall find, on Christmas night, an entrance into every home, and every heart throbbing with joyful gratitude at the return of the blessed day that gave the Christ-child to a sinful world, the reign of the Prince of Peace shall have begun below; everywhere there shall be rendered, “Glory to God in the highest,” and “Good-will to men” shall be the universal law—we shall all have become as little children.
C. S. WESTCOTT & CO.,
Printers,
No. 79 John Street, N. Y.