Thus, in the very inception of the human family, fatherhood became subordinate to motherhood; and so, because conditions after all have not fundamentally changed, it has ever since continued. "Mothers' Day," for example, is celebrated with enthusiasm; "Fathers' Day" remains a mere humorous suggestion, a kind of clown in the editorial circus. Then as now, moreover, in the earlier life of the child, Father, although not quite as useless as a vermiform appendix, was and is of very little importance.
I am not forgetting--for I do them an honor I can hardly express--those fathers who walk, all through the night, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, across an otherwise silent room, that the motion incidental to their perambulation may soothe a mysteriously afflicted babe to sleep; nor am I unaware that Father sometimes pushes baby's wicker chariot, pausing ever and anon to pick up and restore some article of infant use or pleasure that the little rascal has mischievously thrown overboard, and in many other touching ways patiently tries to make himself useful. These offices are almost impersonal. Any father could perform them for any baby: a mechanical father, ingeniously contrived to walk back and forth, push, or pick up and restore, according as the operator wound him up and pressed the proper button, would do as well. Only in proportion as the child begins to sit up and take intelligent notice does Father's position become responsible, important, and precarious. From that time on, his behavior has consequences.
Fatherhood, in fact, is a mighty serious business--yet even to-day many a father seems to have made no more conscious preparation for it than had our astonished ancestor, Trueheart. My friend Mr. Todd, for example, meets Miss Margaret Lemon at an afternoon tea. A blind attachment (I am putting the case with unimpassioned simplicity, for this is no novel) springs up (God knows why) between them. If Harvey Todd had been Faust, Mephistopheles would have wasted time trying to tempt him with any Margaret but a Lemon; and if Miss Lemon had been that other Margaret, Mephistopheles would have had to produce Harvey Todd, who, I am glad to believe, would have promptly told him to go to the Devil.