studying your face with open mouth and spoon in hand,
and imitating his model with an expression of astonishment and respect.
Listen to his long gossips, wandering as his little brain; does he not
say:

"When I am big like papa I shall have a moustache and a stick like him,
and I shall not be afraid in the dark, because it is silly to be afraid
in the dark when you are big, and I shall say 'damn it,' for I shall then
be grown up."

"Baby, what did you say, sir?"

"I said just as papa does."

What would you? He is a faithful mirror. You are for him an ideal, a
model, the type of all that is great and strong, handsome and
intelligent.

Often he makes mistakes, the little dear, but his error is all the more
delicious in its sincerity, and you feel all the more unworthy of such
frank admiration. You console yourself for your own imperfections in
reflecting that he is not conscious of them.

The defects of children are almost always harrowed from their father;
they are the consequences of a too literal copy. Provide, then, against
them. Yes, no doubt, but I ask you what strength of mind is not needed by
a poor man to undeceive his baby, to destroy, with a word, his innocent
confidence, by saying to him: "My child, I am not perfect, and I have
faults to be avoided?"

This species of devotion on the part of the baby for his father reminds
me of the charming remark of one of my little friends. Crossing the road,
the little fellow caught sight of a policeman. He examined him with
respect, and then turning to me, after a moment's reflection, said, with
an air of conviction: "Papa is stronger than all the policemen, isn't
he?"

If I had answered "No," our intimacy would have been broken off short.

Was it not charming? One can truly say, "Like baby, like papa." Our life
is the threshold of his. It is with our eyes that he has first seen.

Profit, young fathers, by the first moments of candor on the part of your
dear baby, seek to enter his heart when this little heart opens, and
establish yourself in it so thoroughly, that at the moment when the child
is able to judge you, he will love you too well to be severe or to cease
loving. Win his, affection, it is worth the trouble.

To be loved all your life by a being you love--that is the problem to be
solved, and toward the solution of which all your efforts should be
directed. To make yourself loved, is to store up treasures of happiness
for the winter. Each year will t