Meanwhile, as says "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide," "Don't jerk Baby round. Never rush through his exercises, but talk to him in a happy, encouraging way. When he is able to talk he will be glad to tell you what great, good fun he has been having."
So speaks, I think, a mother's imagination; in sober reality, even the great good fun of Exercise 24 will be forgotten. Which is perhaps why, although I have heard men wish they could again be children, I have never heard any man say he would like to be a baby.
_I love dearly to watch the boys at their play. How gayly they pitch and catch their baseball with their strong little hands! How blithely they run from base to base! How merrily their voices come to me across the green; for, although I cannot hear what they say, I know it expresses a young, innocent joy in this big, good world. Yet even in this Garden there is a Serpent, and one day two of the little innocents quarreled and came to blows. A real fight! I soon hurried out and stopped that, but the sight of their little faces distorted with rage, and one poor boy bleeding at the nose, upset me for quite a time._--AN OLD MAID'S WINDOW.
In "The Boyhood of Great Men," published by Harper and Brothers, in 1853, but now, I fear, very little read, it is told of Sir Isaac Newton that "An accident first fired him to strive for distinction in the school-room. The boy who was immediately above him in the class, after treating him with a tyranny hard to bear, was cruel enough to kick him in the stomach, with a severity that caused great pain. Newton resolved to have his revenge, but of such a kind as was natural to his reasoning mind, even at that immature age. He determined to excel his oppressor in their studies and lessons; and, setting himself to the task with zeal and diligence, he never halted in his course till he had found his way to the top of the class; thus exhibiting and leaving a noble example to others of his years similarly situated. Doubtless, after this, he would heartily forgive his crestfallen persecutor, who could not but henceforth feel ashamed of his unmanly conduct, while Newton would feel the proud consciousness of having done his duty after the bravest and noblest fashion which it is in the power of man to adopt."