THE GALAXY.

VOL. XXIII.—MAY, 1877.—No. 5.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by SHELDON & CO., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

A PROGRESSIVE BABY.

Ober Lahnstein, Jan. 16, 1875.

So much, Susie dear, for our small miseries between Blackwall and Rotterdam. Nurse's sickness and the crowd of Cook's tourists (Cook-oos!) aggravated matters; but it is always a tedious bit of way, though I never minded it in my solitary artist days, when either Dresden and happy work or home and happy rest were at end of the hard journey. What it is to be young, gay, and heart-free! For then I went always second class—when I didn't go third!—(except of course on the steamers, where the cheaper accommodation is too rude, and rough companionship too intimate)—and once managed the entire distance from Dresden to London for fifty thalers!—taking it leisurely too; stopping en route to "do" Frankfort, Weimar, Heidelberg, Lourain, Bruges, and Antwerp, and to pay two or three visits at grand houses, where they didn't dream I was fresh from the peasants' compartments!

And I'd no shillings and sixpences then to fee guards and porters, so had to dodge them, look at them as if I didn't see them, lug about my own parcels, and freeze without a foot-warmer!

Now the way is all padded. I always go first-class if Ronayne's along, haven't to lift so much as a hand satchel, am fairly smothered in comforts, as beseems the true English Philistine I'm become. I've the delightfullest husband and baby the round world can show; a nurse fit to command the channel fleet (if that meant wisdom in babies, and she weren't such an outrageously bad sailor!); and I've about as much vim as a syllabub; am so nervous that I weep if Ronayne gets out of my sight when we go for a stroll, if too little toast comes up for my breakfast, or the chocolate isn't frothed, or the trunk won't lock, and have aphasia to that degree that I say cancel when I mean endorse, hair-brush when I want a biscuit, and go stumping down to dinner in a boot and a slipper, being incapable of the connected effort of memory and will that would get both feet into fellow shoes.

But I'm blissfully happy all the same, and we've beheld a spectacle lately that reconciles me perfectly with my own absurdity, and my awkwardness with my precious tot.

Coming up the Rhine we had a pair of fellow voyagers, circumstanced somewhat like ourselves: first baby, not over young (the couple, not the baby, which was only six weeks old!), but travelling without a nurse. This mighty functionary had struck almost at the moment of their departure from London, and a charitable but inexperienced friend came to their aid and set forth with them in charge of the baby.

We missed them on the Batavier, which wasn't strange, and first had our attention drawn to them by the slow Dutch landlord's asking Ronayne, as we stood looking idly out into the formal little garden of the new Bath hotel at Rotterdam, if that was his baby a young woman seated on one of the garden benches was jerking up and down so violently? "Because it was shaken about too much. Young babies couldn't be kept too quiet." This young woman was the benevolent friend, and I suppose the parents were off sight-seeing in the town; for every now and then the whole day through one or another of us reported encountering the young woman alone somewhere, always tossing the baby more or less about.

But next day, after we had embarked on the Rhine boat, and I had helped nurse turn our tiny state-room into a tolerable nursery (that folding bassinnette is just invaluable, and lulled by the motion and the breezy air, my lammie slept better in it than in her own quarters at home), I went upon deck to find Ronayne, and on the way came upon a most piteous, persistent wail, and the wail's father and mother in abject, helpless tendance upon it.

Of course my newly-found mother's heart took me straight to the miserable group; and after a few sympathetic inquiries, I sat down beside the mother, and took the querulous little creature in my arms, where presently it hushed off to sleep. How proud I felt! for that's more than my own baby often condescends to do for my clumsy soothing! The father skulked away with an immensely relieved look, soon after I sat down, and the mother grew quite confidential. She told me of the perfidious nurse's behavior, of the friend's heroic offer, and that they had not had a wink of sleep the night before at the hotel, for nursing the baby had made the friend so ill that they had had to send her back to London that morning. She didn't know but it would have been better if she and baby had turned back with the overdone friend; but it was her husband's holiday—six weeks he had—and he worked so hard the rest of the year—her husband was an author, a journalist (at sight I had guessed him a literary cus—tomer!—hair parted in the middle, crease—y clothes, spectacles, a sparse, pointed beard, and narrow, sloping shoulders, with a stoop in 'em)—and she thought his vacation oughtn't to be spoiled or deferred by the child; and as he would enjoy it all a great deal more with her than alone, she had "trusted to luck," and was going off up the Rhine with him to make a long excursion, before proceeding to some quiet little town on the Moselle, where another nurse was in waiting for her. It was their first baby—yes; they had not been married much over a year. She was fond of it, poor baby! but it was such a pity it had come! They had not wanted children—children would utterly interfere with their plan of life. Both its father and herself were busy people. Oh, there was so much work to be done! and they had married to help each other in toil for the world, and babies were a sad hindrance.

I suggested that the work of moulding an immortal soul, fashioning the character and destinies of a little human creature, seemed to me labor mighty enough for any one's energies and ambition. But she answered me a little sharply, that there were souls enough in the world already; she wanted to be responsible for no more mistakes and wretchedness. However, she fortunately was well and strong, and if she got a good nurse, she would be able to devote herself to work, and to help her husband as she had done before the child came. Was I interested in the woman question? I answered somewhat tamely, that I was very much interested in whatever made women better; that I believed in women, and that this rather wearisome planet wouldn't even be worth condemning without them.

Ah! Then she supposed I had attended the suffrage meetings in London? Her marriage had brought her to London. Before that she had lived in B——, and was secretary of the Woman's Suffrage Association there. Perhaps I had seen her name—Alice Thorpe? Now it was Malise. Her husband was Clement Malise of "The Aurora."

This was said a little proudly, but with the pretty pride a wife has a right to show when she believes she has a clever husband. And a good woman I am sure she was beside whom I sat—kindly, conscientious, earnest, spirited, full of aspiration and zeal gone astray. Pleasant to look upon, too, when I came to separate her from her disfiguring and thoroughly British travelling costume—a hat like an inverted basin, with a long white ostrich feather, dingy, uncurled, and forlornly drooping; a violet stuff gown all bunchy and tormented with woollen ruffles, ruches, and knobby rosettes, and a dark blue bag of a waterproof garment which I took to be the feminine correspondent of that masculine wrap, the Ulster coat—a covering that would turn Apollo himself into a bagman. Not very tall, solidly rather than gracefully made, with a rather driven-together face, the excessively bulging forehead crowding down