love. It is a holy love, that we coarser-fibered men can hardly
understand, and I would not be deemed to lack reverence for it when I
say that surely it need not swallow up all other affection. The baby
need not take your whole heart, like the rich man who walled up the
desert well. Is there not another thirsty traveler standing by?

In your desire to be a good mother, do not forget to be a good wife. No
need for all the thought and care to be only for one. Do not, whenever
poor Edwin wants you to come out, answer indignantly, "What, and leave
baby!" Do not spend all your evenings upstairs, and do not confine your
conversation exclusively to whooping-cough and measles. My dear little
woman, the child is not going to die every time it sneezes, the house is
not bound to get burned down and the nurse run away with a soldier every
time you go outside the front door; nor the cat sure to come and sit on
the precious child's chest the moment you leave the bedside. You worry
yourself a good deal too much about that solitary chick, and you worry
everybody else too. Try and think of your other duties, and your pretty
face will not be always puckered into wrinkles, and there will be
cheerfulness in the parlor as well as in the nursery. Think of your big
baby a little. Dance him about a bit; call him pretty names; laugh at
him now and then. It is only the first baby that takes up the whole of
a woman's time. Five or six do not require nearly so much attention as
one. But before then the mischief has been done. A house where there
seems no room for him and a wife too busy to think of him have lost
their hold on that so unreasonable husband of yours, and he has learned
to look elsewhere for comfort and companionship.

But there, there, there! I shall get myself the character of a
baby-hater if I talk any more in this strain. And Heaven knows I am not
one. Who could be, to look into the little innocent faces clustered
in timid helplessness round those great gates that open down into the
world?

The world--the small round world! what a vast mysterious place it must
seem to baby eyes! What a trackless continent the back garden appears!
What marvelous explorations they make in the cellar under the stairs!
With what awe they gaze down the long street, wondering, like us bigger
babies when we gaze up at the stars, where it all ends!

And down that longest street of all--that long, dim street of life that
stretches out before them--what