imated
that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? You
simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. 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 you ever pray for
twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there ain't any real
difference between triplets and an insurrection.

Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance
of the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty years
from now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still
survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republic
numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our
increase. Our present schooner of State will have grown into a political
leviathan--a Great Eastern. The cradled babies of to-day will be on
deck. Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract
on their hands. Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in
the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred
things, if we could know which ones they are. In one of these cradles
the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething
think of it! and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated,
but perfectly justifiable profanity over it, too. In another the future
renowned astronomer is blinking at the shining Milky Way with but a
languid interest poor little chap!--and wondering what has become of
that other one they call the wet-nurse. In another the future great
historian is lying--and doubtless will continue to lie until his earthly
mission is ended. In another the future President is busying himself
with no profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become of
his hair so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are now
some 60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasion
to grapple with that same old problem a second, time. And in still
one more cradle, some where under the flag, the future illustrious
commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with
his approaching grandeurs and respons