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Show THE NATURAL CHILD. Opposite, is a young woman with a little child. An angelic child. This is no common creature, and it would be difficult to exaggerate her beauty. She is as delicate and dainty as a fairy. At first one only saw the lovely picture of rosy cheeks, deep blue eyes - made quite angelic by dark lashes - the enchanting, laughing mouth, absolutely illumed by the sweet baby teeth, and the finishing touch of a loose yellow curl showing below the white cap. Very soon, however, any woman notices that the child is not only becomingly, but very expensively dressed, and when it becomes manifest that the mother is probably the wife of a mechanic, it occurs to one to wonder what would be the emotions of a European mother of this class, on seeing a child of hers arrayed in all this lace, embroidery and the softest and snowiest of woolen wraps. At once all eyes are drawn toward this sweetest of sweet things - a beautiful child. The first person to notice her is a pleasant looking man, who sits with his wife, in the seat next to the baby. Something about them makes one feel that this is a childless pair. The baby at this moment is half sitting, half lying on her mother's lap, kicking up one little red-shod foot against the back of the next seat. She is almost the only unconscious creature in the car as she lies there perfectly happy and at ease. Friendly man stretches out his hand toward her. Up springs the mother, and with a nervous hand seizes the little foot, puts baby into a conventional attitude, saying with an accent of horror, "Why, Maud! Your food does not look very pretty up there." "What is your name?" asks the man. The baby, bless her heart, has now worked herself down again, into her pretty attitude, and again kicks up the little red foot, making no answer to the stranger. Again the mother seizes the foot, glancing anxiously around at us all, and repeating, "Why, Maud! Tell this gentleman what your name is, Maud, Maud! Tell the gentleman what your name is." Baby is gazing happily now at a bird in a cage hanging near, and visible through a rent in the paper cover; but the mother cannot leaver he in peace, and begins a vigorous pushing back of the yellow hair under the cap. We can all feel how it pulls. That done, she stiffens up the angel in her lap into the attitude of a wax doll and begins the exhibition again : "Can't you tell the gentleman how old you are?" "Most two," the baby answers promptly. "Oh, no; not most two," the mother says solemnly; "two years old, Maud, say two years old." And the - Maud, say this, and Maud, say that, is repeated over and over, the little victim being shown off and put through her paces, without a moment's peace or rest, for so long that it makes one's ears and heart ache. It is a relief when the friendly man reaches out his arms to the baby in a gentle way, and she raises her blue eyes to his, and seeing that yearning look there which a love of children often puts into a man's eyes, and which even a very young baby knows how to read, straightway holds out her arms to him, and he lifts her over the back of the seat with that expression, wholly pleased and half surprised, which becomes one who has received the highest of compliments - the confidence and preference of a little child. For a few minutes our dear baby was allowed to rest in this quiet man's arms, to play with his watch, to hunt through his pockets, to be let alone to do whatever she pleased. It was not long, however, before the mother began struggling in an ominous way with her traveling basket, and then, while baby was entirely quiet and happy, watching the reflection of the lamp on the bright watch, a large piece of what looked like pound cake was passed over to her by her mother. It was hard to see her put the little white teeth into it, and to judge from this what the ordinary diet was likely to be; hard to glance from the beautiful, peach-like cheek of the child to the sallow one of the young mother, which, together with the fragile, broken American teeth, told the story of chronic dyspepsia and general debility. Is this what our blooming baby is coming to? She throws half the cake on the floor, thank heaven, but eats the rest carelessly, and without appetite (there being no member of the S. P. C. C. present to prevent this case of cruelty to children), and then standing for a moment on the man's knees, she glances up, and through the narrow window in the roof of the car she catches sight of the moon. "Moon!" she shouts, with an enchanting laugh. "Moon up high!" then up go her darling hands, and she calls,"Moonie! Moonie! Come Moonie!" Half the occupants of the car are looking at her at this moment, as sweet a picture as ever gladdened human hearts. What was there in all this to bring tears to folk's eyes? And yet they started, at the sight of this little white-robed creature, whose every natural impulse seemed doomed to speedy paralysis by means of the straight-jacket of self-consciousness, making now and then a hopeless little leap for freedom. As they watched her standing there, her hands stretched up toward her native land, and calling the moon to come to her, one felt half indignant that it did not come. "Why! She never did that before," said her mother. "Maud, sit down and tell the gentleman where you went with parper. Where did you go with parper, Maud? Maud, where did you go with parper?" The dear cheeks are growing too red now. "Water," she says as she is dragged down - from the companionship of the skies. "Water, water." It becomes a moan, and we think of the pound-cake. "No. There ain't no water Marmer can't get no water. Water is all gone. Tell the gentleman where you are going, Maud." "Water," moans the baby, and turns her flaming cheek toward her mother, stretching out her hands to her; "water." "Water is all gone; perhaps there'll be a boy round with water time bye," says the mother, "Tell the gentleman where you went with parper, Maud." My journey is ended. Poor baby goes further, night though it be, and the last words I hear as I leave the car are; "Can't you tell the gentleman where you are going, Maud?" I will ask no more why we are a self-conscious nation, but can any one tell me why angles from heaven are given into these cruelly ignorant hands? |