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<h2> SPEECH ON THE BABIES </h2>
<p>AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIR
FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879</p>
<p>The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies—as they comfort us in<br/>
our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities."<br/></p>
<p>I like that. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have
not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works
down to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame that for a
thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if
he didn't amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute—if
you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life and
recontemplate your first baby—you will remember that he amounted to
a great deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that when the
little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your
resignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey, his 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. And there was only one
form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the 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
at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for blow; but when he clawed
your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your nose, you had to
take it. When the thunders of war were sounding in your ears you set your
faces toward the batteries, and advanced with steady tread; but when he
turned on the terrors of his war-whoop you advanced in the other
direction, 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? No. You got
up and got it. When he ordered his pap-bottle and it was not warm, did you
talk back? Not you. You went to work and warmed it. You even descended so
far in your menial office as to take a suck 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 those
hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff yet. And how many things you learned as
you went along! Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful
old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the
angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin—simply wind
on the stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his
usual hour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and
remark, with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-school
book much, that that was the very thing you were about to propose
yourself? Oh! you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering
up and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled
undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to
sing!—"Rock-a-by baby in the treetop," for instance. What a
spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the
neighbors, too; for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes
military music at three in the morning. And when you had been keeping this
sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated
that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? ["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 just a house and
a front yard full by itself. One baby can furnish more business than you
and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising,
irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you
can't make him stay on the reservation. 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.</p>
<p>Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of
the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty years from
now we shall all be dead, I 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. The cradled babies of to-day will be on deck. Let them be
well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract on their hands.
Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some
which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could
know which ones they are. In one of those cradles the unconscious Farragut
of the future is at this moment teething—think of it!—and
putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but perfectly
justifiable profanity over it, too. In another the future renowned
astronomer is blinking at the shining Milky Way with but a languid
interest—poor little chap!—and wondering what has become of
that other one they call the wet-nurse. In another the future great
historian is lying—and doubtless will continue to lie until his
earthly mission is ended. In another the future President is busying
himself with no profounder problem of state than what the mischief has
become of his hair so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there
are now some 60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him
occasion to grapple with that same old problem a second time. And in still
one more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious
commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his
approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole
strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his
big toe into his mouth—an achievement which, meaning no disrespect,
the illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some
fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there
are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.</p>
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