have to do is sit near
it. You can read or sew. Just gently push the cradle with your foot. You
can have a rope reaching to your bed. If the baby gets restless at night
all you have to do is hold on to the rope."

Alfred insisted that Eddie, the father, learn to sing the old nursery
song, the inspiration of which was the sugar trough cradle Alfred was
rocked in:

Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bow bends cradle will fall,
Down comes baby, cradle and all.

Pearl claims it was the singing of this lullaby or the attempts of Eddie
to sing it, that spoiled Field's disposition.

The cabinet maker certainly misunderstood Alfred's specifications as to
the construction of the cradle. Aunt Tillie declared she would not have
it in the house. Pearl named it "Noah's Ark." When baby was laid in the
cradle he appeared as but a speck. When Alfred essayed to rock it to
show the others how, baby howled with fear. Alfred swore if they had
known anything or consulted him they would have ordered the cradle
before the baby came, put him into it on arrival, then he would have
gotten used to it by this time. "Now you'll have trouble breaking him to
the cradle. Every baby should be cradle-broke as soon as they are born."
Aunt Tillie again reminded Alfred the baby was not a colt.

"The cabinet maker was ordered to make a cradle, not a life raft. I
didn't order but two rockers. I never ordered it that big. Do you think
I'm a fool. I know what a cradle is."

[Illustration]

"Well, you don't call that thing a cradle, do you?" inquired Aunt
Tillie.

"Well, it's as near as you will get to one, people don't know nothing
about babies or cradles in these days."

The cradle, with its three rockers and six sharp points and a big old
fashioned rocking chair with four more pointed rockers, made the baby's
room a storage place for ancient instruments of torture.

The night was a wild one, winds without, colic within. Eddie knew the
route to the paregoric.

After the first combat with the rocker Eddie swore it would have to go
or he would. He felt he had a chance with the rocking chair, but with
six points more against him he balked. "Besides nearly breaking my neck,
I broke the paregoric bottle and got glass in my feet."

[Illustration: The Wreck]

Doc and Alfred sorrowfully bore the cradle to the chicken house and it
has become a receptacle for old carpets and other rubbi