The Babies.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3493, 5 March 1880, Page 2

The Babies.

At the banquet of the Army of the Tennessee, a toast was proposed to " The Babies." Mark Tirain responded as follows :—

" The Babies."—-As they comfort us in our sorrow, let us not forget them in our festivities. (Laughter.) I like that. (Laughter.) We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies. (Laughter.) We haven't all been generals or poets or statesman. But when toasts work down to babies, we stand on common ground, for we hare all been there ; we hare all been babies. (Laughter and applause.) It is a shame that for thousands of yean the world's banquets bare utterly ignored the baby as if he did not amount to any* thing. If. you gentlemen will stop and think for a minute; if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life (laughter), and contemplate your first baby, you will remember that lie amounted to a good deal and eren some over. You soldiers, you all know when that little fellow arrived at family . headquarters, you had to hand in your resignation. (Laughter.) He took entire command. You became his lackey, hie mere body-servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was not a commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather or anything- else. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not (laughter); and there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was double-quick. He treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the . bravest of you didn't dare to say a word. You could face the death-storm of Don* alderson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for blow (applause); but when he clawed your whiskers and pulled your hair and twisted your nose you had to take it. (Laughter.) When the thunders of war were sounding in your eara you set your tace towards batteries and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war whoops you advanced in another direotion (laugh* ter), and mighty glad of the chance, too. When he called for soothing syrup, did you venture to throw out any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming

an officer and a gentleman ? (Laughter.) No, yoa got up and got it. If he ordered his pap bottle, did you talk back? No, you went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office, as to take a sup at that warm, insipid stuff yourself to see if it was right, three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic and a drop of peppermint to kill the immortal hiccough. I can taste it yet. (Boars of laughter.) And how many thiDgs you learned as you went along. Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleeps it is because the angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin, (Laughter.) Simply wiud on the stomach. My friends if the baby propoied to take a walk at his usual hour 2.30 in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark with a mental addition that wouldn't improve the Sunday school book much, that it was the very thin.? you were about to propose yourself ? (Roars.) Oh, yes, you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby talk, but you tuned up your martial voice and tried to sing 'Bock a by baby, in the tree top,' for instance. What a spectacle for the Army of the Tennessee (roars of laughter), and what an infliction fomthe neighbours, too! For it isn't everybody within a mile around that likes military music at 3 o'clock in the morning ; and when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours and your little velvet had intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you say ? You simply went on till you dropped in the last ditch. (Laughter.) The idea that a baby don't amount to anything! One baby is just a house and front yard by itself. If one baby can't furnish more business than you or. your whole interior department can attend to he is not enterprising. Irrepressible, brimful of lawless activity, you can do what you please, you can't make him stay on his reservation. (Prolonged laughter.) Sufficient unto the day is one baby—as long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot; and there ain't any real difference between triplets and an insurrection. (Laughter and applause), Yes, it was high time fora toast-master to recognize the importance of the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty years hence w 9 shall all be dead—l trust—and then this flag, if it still survive, and let us hope it may, will be floating over a republic numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our increase; our present schooner of State will have grown into a political leviathan—a Great Eastern— and the cradled babies of to-day will be on deck I Let them be well trained for we are going to leave a big contract on their hands. (Applause).