I was never so happy as when I held him
in my arms, sleeping or waking; and he, happy anywhere, was
always contented when he was with me.
I was as fond as ever of reading, and somehow I managed to
combine baby and book. Dickens's "Old Curiosity Shop" was just
then coming out in a Philadelphia weekly paper, and I read it
with the baby playing at my feet, or lying across my lap, in an
unfinished room given up to sea-chests and coffee-bags and spicy
foreign odors. (My cherub's papa was a sea-captain, usually
away on his African voyages.) Little Nell and her grandfather
became as real to me as my darling charge, and if a tear from his
nurse's eyes sometimes dropped upon his cheek as he slept, he
was not saddened by it. When he awoke he was irrepressible;
clutching at my hair with his stout pink fists, and driving all
dream-people effectually out of my head. Like all babies, he was
something of a tyrant; but that brief, sweet despotism ends only
too soon. I put him gratefully down, dimpled, chubby, and
imperious, upon the list of my girlhood's teachers.
Pages:
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245