ve all dangers,
to aggravate your rheumatism, to defy that celebrated god,
Tirednature'ssweetrestorer, and to take your snatches of sleep
_a pied_, a kind of fatherly walking Stewart, as if you were doing
your thousand miles in a thousand hours for a thousand dollars, and
were sure of winning the money? Believe me, my friend, the world has
many such martyrs, unknown, obscure, suffering men, whose names Rumor
never blows through her miserable conch-shell,--and I am one of them.
As Bully Bertram says, in Maturin's pimento play,--"I am a wretch,
and proud of wretchedness." A child, the offspring of your own loins,
is something worth watching for. Such a father is your true Tapley;
--there _is_ some credit in coming out jolly under such circumstances.
The unnatural parent, as those warning cries break the silence, may
counterfeit Death's counterfeit, and may even be guilty of the
surpassing iniquity of simulating a snore. _Nunquam dormio_; I am
like "The Sun" newspaper,--sleepless, tireless, disturbed, but
imperturbable. I meet my fate, and find the pang a pleasant one. And
so may I ever be, through all febrile, cutaneous, and flatulent
vicissitudes,--careful of chicken-pox, mild with mumps and measles,
unwearied during the weaning, growing tenderer with each succeeding
rash, kinder with every cold, gentler with every grief, and
sweeter-tempered with every sorrow sent to afflict my little woman!
'Tis a rough world. We must acclimate her considerately.

Of the matter of education I also have what are called "views." I
may be peculiar. School-committee-men who spell Jerusalem with a G,
drill-sergeants who believe in black-boards and visible numerators,
statistical fellows who judge of the future fate of the republic by
the average attendance at the "Primaries," may not agree with me in
my idea of bending the twig. I do believe, that, if Dame Nature
herself should apply for a school, some of these wise Dogberries
would report her "unqualyfide." I will not murder my pretty pet.
So she be gentle, kindly, and loving, what care I if at sixteen
years of age she cannot paint the baptism of John upon velvet,
does not know a word of that accursed French language, breaks
down in the "forward and back" of a cotillon, and cannot with
spider fingers spin upon the piano the swiftest Tarantelle of
Chopin.--[Illustration: musical note] = 2558 Metronome? We will
find something better and braver than all that, my little Alice!
Confound your