The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-12-06
THE LUXURY OF BABIES.
What no Family snould be Without,
 According to the President.

uLs
 Kansas City Star. .-
 In this politely indifferent age, when so many people are afflicted with the boredom of living, attention may appro- priately be called to the remedy involved In the rearing of child A baby, which to outsiders appears to be only hairless and colicky bit of albuminoids matter. has been known repeatedly to quite transform household.
 In a recent magazin article clever writer has. discoursed on the luxury of children. and has urged every family to provide itself with at least one boy and a school girl. But really 1t isn't neces- sary to wait for them to reach school age An infant may be as good a rem edy for ennui as a child old enough to read 'Ivanhoe." To be quite frank. most men-if they dared express their inmost thoughts-would prefer to skip the first six months or so. A woman. of course. will thoroughly believe that an little bit and cunning for any use. But such a belief requires too heavy a stretch of the average masculine imagination
 The father-the proud father" of course-will discreetly assent, but with mental reservations. Perhaps masculine vanity is responsible, for 1t is difficult for a man to get up a great amount of in- terest In creature which pays no more attention to him than it does to the stove pipe. In spite of this paternal indiffer- ence the first six months are by no means wasted. The maternal instinct. being unhampered by masculine crass- ness, finds all manner of signs of intelli- gence in the most unpromising manifes- tations of infantile activity. In the mind of the mother every quicker of the face, every squeal, every kick. is invested with significance. There is a good deal of luxury in watching a woman's delight In baby, even in the first six monlls of its life.
 After the child is half year old the average man begins to find it a source Of pleasure. By that time 1t has become accustomed enough to living to take an intelligent interest in things It begins to practice saying nonsense syIlables. and repeats long strings of 'nin-nin-nins" and "goidn-goid ;." By degrees it comes to associate certain syllables with gen. eral ideas. Thus, mum -mum-mum'' in the first stages seems 70 indicate an un- easy desire for something. As this long ing becomes more definite 1t centres up- on the mother and gradually sne be- comes the mum-mum-mum'' and then the "ma-ma-ma." In the same way ''ba- ba-ba" may be first an expression of in- terest at moving objects, which grad ually is applied to all animals and finally IS restricted to a dog or perhaps a cow
 very blase person is apt to find hlm- self taking decided interest in this eyo- lution of language-which is only one of a large group Of development processes that are constantly going on It is sur prising, for instance, to observe how much of knack 1t is to drink out of a cup when you have no notion of how to f1x your lips or how interesting 1t is to attempt to balance an old tin pail on a rocking chair when you are just begin ming to get acquainted with the force or gravity and the properties of ma tier. The man who Is bored to death with everything finds 1t hard to preserve his indifference when the baby first begins to laugh over his home-cc ming.
 Ine argument that all this pleasure is more than offset by the trouble incident to caring for the infant has always been fallacious. The fallacy Is more apparent than ever nowadays under modern meth ods Of child rearing. The twentieth cen- tury baby isn rocked to sleep. He is put to bed and left alone. He isn't taken up when he cries, and the conse.uence is that he sleeps all night Occasionally baby Is nervous or cantankerous But the average healthy infant. rationallv treated. doesn't produce as much insom- nia In a month as strong cup of coffee occasions in a single night
 While 1t isn't to be denied that a boy or girl In school is a greater .uxury than an infant, still a baby is a piece of fur niture not to be sneezed at It will fur Dtsh immensely more diversion than an automobile and a steam yacht combined