The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1879-02-06
lean. But let the child be ugly. and

clean. But let the child be ugly, and
it does not attract them; let it be neg
lected, and of dirty face. and it repels
them; let it scream, and they can't for
the life of them see why people bring
their children on journeys, or to church,
or into the drawing-room, or at the
table-according to the situation of the
particular annoyance at the moment.
But they who surely and absolutely
love children do not stay to see whether
their faces and frocks are clean and
pretty or not-the child is o lovely
thing to them under all the mask of the
dust of which we are made, the soil,
the wear and tear; they do not much
care whether the child screams or not;
often, indeed, to them, as to the old
miner in the California theater who,
when baby set up its pipes, called out
to the orchestra to stop their strum-
ming and let him hear the baby yell,
the sound is sort of music; and like
the man who considered being beaten
at whist the next pleasure to beating,
they had rather hear baby yell than
Those who love children are not those
who merely love the pleasure they can
get from children; those love, not the
children, but that pleasure, and the
moment it ceases to be pleasure, then
farewell to the children. Those who
really love children, love all about
them, the troubling and the teasing
that they make, the washing, andj wip-
ing, and worrying; they do not tire
with their fretting, they are not dis
gusted with their care, they are not
annoyed with their questioning, they
are not made nervous by their bawl-
ing; they take them in their entirety;
it never occurs to them to say that
these things are disagreeable, for, in
reality, the agreeable things, the love-
illness, the velvet cheeks, the exquisite
mouth with its little pearls, the per-
feet eyes, the opening soul, the charm
ing intelligence, the constant sense of
the creation of a new human being
going on under the eyes, the receptive
ity of love, the thing for love, all so
far overbalance any thing that is not
in accord with them as to put it en-
tirely out of sight and mind. To those
who love children it does not occur to
wait before giving love in order to see
if they are willful and spoiled, wheth-
er they cry too much, whether they
are going to give trouble or not; they
only say: "Here is child; let us love
it." They are ready to get up in the
night with it, to walk the floor with it,
to tread on tiptoe if it sleeps, to aban-
don themselves to its amusement if it
wakes, to sing to it, to talk to it, to
obey all its little tyrannics, to stay at
home from other pleasure for it and
think it no sacrifice, to forget them
selves in its existence, and when it is
the most trouble to be thankful that
there is baby in the house.
These are the people who love chill
dren-not merely they, it may be seen,
who love the peachy cheek which
yields to their kisses with pleasant sem
sation, and the fragrance of the sweet
baby breath; not merely they who like
the tickling that their vacant or tired
minds receive from the action of the
young expanding intellect of the tiny
creature, who are entertained by the
stammering of the first thoughts and
the effort after the first syllables, who
are pleased in fine weather and run
away in foul. These latter are the
summer friends of the little people, and
full soon do the little people find it
out; for, as a general rule, one needs
no better criterion as to who it is that
loves children than observation of the
fact of whom it is that the children
love. 1t is true that children will be
amused and pleased for a while by the
summer sort of friends; but let tum-
BILE, grief, pain, come to them, and
the summer friend is discarded unerr-
ingly for the one whose sympathy is
steadfast, and who does not ask
whether it is good child or a bad one,
a pretty or a plain one, a rich or a
poor, but only whether it is a child.
IS Frank, l love good little boys" said
a worthy parent, trying do his duty to
an obstreperous young son. Eyes,
papa" came the reply of the four-year-
old, "but Uncle So-and-so loves little
boys whether they are good or not: :"
And that, it seems to us, is the only
way to love them; for it is not the way
in which we hope we ourselves are
loved, not only by one another, but by
the Power above us? 1t is also, in
deed, the only way in which to obtain
lasting pleasure from the little beings;
for it is only when we have surrendered
ourselves, without thought of what we
obtain in return, but because we can
not help it, and would not help it if we
could, that we find out what they have
done for us, the light and joy that they
have brought into the house, with all
the labor ard confusion and care that
they have brought there too; for more
than once has it CHANGED that into a
tumultuous and hating household the
advent of a little child has brought
peace and harmony, and love, too, not
only for itself, but for all around it, till
it has made lives dear and desirable
that before it came seemed impossible
to live; for there are few such peace
makers as a baby; none such, if we
may believe the poet, as baby's
grave.-Harper's Bazaar.