I am happy to believe that the maternal care which antedates the birth of its object is becoming daily a subject of deeper thought and more enlightened comprehension, with those whose duty it is to be instructed in this regard. It is only among the ignorant or the reckless that we find total disbelief and utter neglect of the laws which treat of the intimate and subtle relation existing between mother and child. It is no longer customary to scout as old wives’ fables the tales of horrible wrong done by passionate or imprudent women to the bodies and intellects of their unborn babes. But we have still much to learn, and more to heed upon this vital point.
Passing thus briefly over the earliest phase of motherly duty, we come to the education of the living, breathing, “necessary evil,” or cherished blessing, as the parent’s taste or principles may determine the little stranger to be. The pink, plump, piping bantling has been exhibited to the usual round of ceremonious visitors, and passed muster with all--in the mother’s hearing--having been praised by one as the image of his papa, and by another, no less discerning, as his mother’s miniature, and, content with having acted well its part, in voting him to be a “remarkably fine child,” the “finest of the season,” Society dismisses the subject and remands baby to his curtained crib in the darkest corner of the nursery. For all that Society cares or thinks, he may, in that convenient retreat, slumber away the seasons of infancy and adolescence in a sort of Rip Van Winkle torpor, until his long clothes drop from his growing frame like the husk from a ripe nut. Society does not regard a “human boy”--as Mr. Chadband has it--as having arrived at the “interesting age” until he attains the age of discretion. Young lady cousins, enthusiastic school-girls, or matrons, incited to the examination by thoughts of their own little ones, occasionally lift the lace curtain and turn down the coverlet; call him an “angel,” and remark in rapturous whispers upon his increasing size and comeliness, and forget all about him by the time they reach the foot of the stairs. Or, an old friend of the family who “dotes upon babies,” begs that the “cherub” may be brought down to the parlor, saying, in pathetic reproach, “To think, my love, how seldom I see the darling!” Really deceived into a belief of the sincerity of her visitor’s desire, mamma sends off an order to nurse; baby is caught up from his crib of ease, thrust into a clean slip, his tender scalp brushed to the right and left of the line--more or less imaginary--where the down--_alias_ hair--ought to part, until the soft, throbbing spot on the top of his head pulsates faster and harder with pain and fright. Duly prepared for inspection, he performs the journey to the lower floor, where he undergoes a vigorous kissing from the baby-lover, who “must hold him” herself. The blinds are opened, that his budding beauties may be clearly seen, and while the connoisseur goes into a transport of admiration, Master Baby, alarmed, fluttered, and uncomfortable, first looks long and piteously into the strange visage above him, and proceeds to express his sentiments by wrinkling up his cherubic nose and opening his cherry mouth for a squall.