Alonzo Fitz, and Other Stories

  SPEECH ON THE BABIES

  AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIRFIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879

  The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies--as they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities."

  I like that. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We havenot all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast worksdown to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame that for athousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, asif he didn't amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute--ifyou will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married lifeand recontemplate your first baby--you will remember that he amounted toa great deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that whenthe little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in yourresignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey, his merebody-servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was not a commanderwho made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else. Youhad to execute his order whether it was possible or not. And there wasonly one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that wasthe double-quick. He treated you with every sort of insolence anddisrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a word. You couldface the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blowfor blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, andtwisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of war weresounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, andadvanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of hiswar-whoop you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of thechance, too. When he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throwout any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming anofficer and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered hispap-bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went towork and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office asto take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it wasright--three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify thecolic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those hiccoughs. I can tastethat stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you went along!Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old sayingthat when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angelsare whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin--simply wind on thestomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usualhour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly andremark, with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-schoolbook much, that that was the very thing you were about to proposeyourself? Oh! you were under good discipline, and as you went flutteringup and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattledundignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices andtried to sing!--"Rock-a-by baby in the treetop," for instance. What aspectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for theneighbors, too; for it is not everybody within a mile around that likesmilitary music at three in the morning. And when you had been keepingthis sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-headintimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did youdo? ["Go on!"] You simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch.The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is justa house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can furnish morebusiness than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. Heis enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do whatyou please, you can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient untothe day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't youever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there ain'tany real difference between triplets and an insurrection.

  Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importanceof the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty yearsfrom now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it stillsurvive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republicnumbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of ourincrease. Our present schooner of State will have grown into a politicalleviathan--a Great Eastern. The cradled babies of to-day will be ondeck. Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contracton their hands. Among the three or four million cradles now rocking inthe land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacredthings, if we could know which ones they are. In one of those cradles theunconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething--thinkof it!--and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, butperfectly justifiable profanity over it, too. In another the futurerenowned astronomer is blinking at the shining Milky Way with but alanguid interest--poor little chap!--and wondering what has become ofthat other one they call the wet-nurse. In another the future greathistorian is lying--and doubtless will continue to lie until his earthlymission is ended. In another the future President is busying himselfwith no profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become ofhis hair so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are nowsome 60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasionto grapple with that same old problem a second time. And in stillone more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustriouscommander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened withhis approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his wholestrategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get hisbig toe into his mouth--an achievement which, meaning no disrespect, theillustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to somefifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man,there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.