t luxury. Well, sir, do you think it
ever rains on that tin? No, sir; skips it every time. Mind, in this
speech I have been trying merely to do honor to the New England
weather--no language could do it justice. But, after all, there is at
least one or two things about that weather (or, if you please, effects
produced by it) which we residents would not like to part with. If we
hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit
the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying
vagaries--the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from
the bottom to the top--ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when
every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the
whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond
plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns
all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and
flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again
with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and
green to gold--the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of
dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest
possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable
magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong.

THE BABIES

THE BABIES

DELIVERED AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE
TENNESSEE TO THEIR FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT,
NOVEMBER, 1879

The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies.--As they comfort
us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities."

I like that. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have
not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works
down to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame that for a
thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as
if he didn't amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute--if
you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life
and recontemplate your first baby--you will remember that he amounted
to a good deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that when
that little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in
your resignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey,
his mere body-servant, and you had to stand around