is so late at night aunt i presume will in some way know about it and ask me why i sat up so long i am tired but the excitement of the afternoon is not all gone that any one in the world should believe it possible for mother to be unhappy in life to be punished is amazing surely a man whose makes such an idea conceivable is profoundly to be pitied may is perfectly delightful about she hardly lets a day go by without me not to spoil baby and yet she is herself an abject slave to the slightest caprice of the small person we have to night been having a sort of battle royal over baby s going to sleep by herself in the dark i made up my mind the time had come when some semblance of discipline must be begun and i supposed of course that would approve and assist to my surprise she failed me at the veiy first ditch i am going to put into the i an may and take away the light she must learn to go to sleep in the dark she be frightened objected she s too little to know anything about being afraid i retorted although i had secretly a good deal of too little she s too little not to be afraid i saw at a glance that i had before me a struggle with them as well as with baby children are not afraid of the dark until they are told to be i declared as as possible they are told not to be objected that puts the idea into their heads was my answer regarded me with evident but supposing the baby cries she demanded then she must be left to stop i answered with outward firmness and inward but suppose she cries herself sick insisted she won t she just cry a little till she finds nobody comes and then she go to sleep the two girls regarded me with looks that spoke in the largest of it is so seldom they are entirely united that it was to have them thus make common cause against me but i had to keep up for the sake of dignity if for nothing else was fed and arranged for the night she was kissed and and tucked into her then i got and both protesting they did n t mind sitting up with the darling all night out of the room darkened the windows and shut baby in alone for the first time in her whole life a life still so little the of a saint i closed the nursery door with an air of great calmness and determination but outside i lingered like a complete coward the girls were darkly from the end of the hall and we needed only to look like three for two or three minutes there was a soothing and silence so that i turned to smile with an air of superior wisdom on the maids then without warning baby uplifted her voice and there was something most about the cry as if had been holding her breath until she were black in the face and only let it escape one second short of actual i jumped as if a mouse had sprung into my face and the two girls down upon me in a whirl of triumphant indignation there miss cried there miss cried well i said i expected her to cry some she wants to be walked with poor little thing said i was rejoiced to have a chance to turn the tables and i sprang upon her admission at once i said severely have you been walking to sleep i told you never to do it self convicted could only murmur that she had just taken her up and down two or three times to make her sleepy she hadn t really walked her to sleep what if she had demanded boldly her place entirely forgotten in the excitement of the moment if babies like to be walked to sleep it stands to reason that s nature may i began to feel as if all authority were fast slipping away from me and that i should at this rate soon become a very secondary person in my own house i tried to recover myself by the most severe air of which i was capable you must not talk outside the nursery door i told them if hears voices of course she keep on crying go downstairs both of you i see to baby they had not yet arrived at open and so with manifest they departed grumbling to each other as they went baby seemed to have some intelligence that her were being for she set up a series of shrieks which made every fibre of my body quiver as soon as the girls were out of sight i down on my knees outside of the door and put my hands over my ears i was afraid of myself and only the need i felt of holding out for s own sake gave me strength to keep from rushing into the nursery in abject surrender the absurdity of it makes me laugh now but with the shrieks of baby piercing me i felt as if i were involved in a tragedy of the deepest i think i was never so near in my ufe but i had even then some faint and far away sense of how ridiculous i was and that saved me like a young and every cry went through me like a knife i was on my knees on the floor pouring out tears like a watering pot trying to shut out the sound there is something in a baby s cry that is too much even for a sense of humor and no woman could have heard it without being overcome the of a saint i had so stopped my ears that although 