AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF
THE TENNESSEE TO THEIR FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879.
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The fifteenth regular toast was
"The Babies--as they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them
in our festivities."
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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
reflect on your first baby--you will remember that he amounted to a great deal,
and even something more.
You soldiers all know that when the 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, too. He was not a commander who made allowances for time,
distance, weather, or anything else. You had to execute his order whether it
was possible or not.
And there was only one form of marching in his
manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick. He treated you with every
sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a
word. You could face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back
blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and
twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of war were sounding
in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, and advanced with steady
tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war-whoop you advanced in the
other direction, and mighty glad of the chance, too.
When he called for soothing-syrup, did you
venture to throw out any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming
an officer and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered his
pap-bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went to work
and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a
suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right--three parts
water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of
peppermint to kill those hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff yet.
And how many things you learned as you went
along!
Sentimental young folks still take stock in that
beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the
angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin--simply wind on the
stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual hour, two
o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark, with a mental
addition which would not improve a Sunday-school book much, that that was the
very thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh! You were under good
discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down the room in your undress
uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your
martial voices and tried to sing!
"Rock-a-bye baby in the treetop," for
instance. What a spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction
for the neighbors, too; for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes
military music at three in the morning. And when you had been keeping this sort
of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that
nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? ["Go
on!"] 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, and 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.
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 them 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 dozy 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 more profound a 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,
somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious commander-in-chief of the
American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeurs and
responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment to
trying to find out some way to get his big toe into his mouth--an achievement
which, meaning no disrespect, the illustrious guest of this evening turned his
entire attention to some fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a
prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.
