Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1879 — Mark Twain’s Babies. [ARTICLE]

Mark Twain’s Babies.

Mark Twain wound up the speechmaking at the recent banquet ot the Army of the Tennessee in Chicago, with the following iuimitrable response to the toast: “The Babies.” As they oomfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in onr lestivities. 1 like that! We haven’t all had the good fortune to be ladies [laughter;] we haven’t all been Generals, or poets, or statesman; but when the toast works down to the “Babies” we stand on common ground, for we’ve all been there—Deen babies. [Laughter and applause.] 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 gentleman will stop and think a minute—if you will go back fifty or a hundred years, to your early married life [laughter] and reconteraplate your first baby, you will remember that he amounted to a good deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that when the little fellow arrived at headquarters you had to hand in your resignation. [Laughter.] He took entire command. You became his lackey, his mere body-servant, and you had to stand around, too. lie 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 manuel of tactics, and that was the double-quick. He treated you with every sort of iusolence aud disrespect, aud the bravest of you didn’t dare to say a word, You could face the death-storm of Donaldson an Vicksburg, and give back blow for blow—[applause]—but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your uqse, you had to take it. [Laughter.] When the thunders of war were sounding in your ears, you set your face toward the batteries, and advanced with sturdy tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war-whoops, you advanced in- the other direction— [laughter] —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! You got up and got it. If he ordered his pap-oottle, and it wasn’t 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 immortal hiccoughs. I can taste it yet. [Roars of laughter.] And how many things you learned, as you went along. Sentimental young folk still took stock in that beautiful old saying, that because the angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, but “too thin.” [Laughter.] Simply wind on the stomach, my friends! If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual hour—half-past 2 in the morning—didn’t you rise up promply and remark, with a mental addition which wouldn’t improve a Sundayschool book much, that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself? [Roars.] Oh, you were under good discipline! And, as you went fluttering up and the room in your “undress uniforrityou not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but you tuned up your martial voice and tried to sing, “Rock-a by, baby, in the treetop,” for instance. What a spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! [Roars of laughter.[ And what an affliction for the neighbors, too; for it isn’t everybody within a mile around that likes military music at 3 in the morning. And when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours, and your iittie velvet-head intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise—“goon,”—what did youdo? You simply went on till you dropped in the last ditch. [Great laughter.] 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 bal-y can furnish more business than yo.i and your whole Interior Departmen: can attend to; he is enterprising, irrepressible, brim full of lawless activities; do what you please, you can’t make him stay on the reservation. [Prolonged laughter.] Sufficient unto the day is one baby. Asiongasyou are intyour right mind, don’t you ever Efor twins. [Roars of laughter and ies by General Sheridan.] Twins amount to a permanent riot, and there ain’t any real difference between triplets aud an insurrection. [Laughter.] Yes, it was high time for a toastmaster to recognize the importance of the “Babies.” Think what is in store for the present crop. Fifty years hence we shall all be dead—l truste-and then this flag, if it still .survives —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 has grown into a political leviathan—a Great Eastern—and the cradled babies of to-day will be on deck. Let them be well "trained, ior we are going to leave a good contract on their hands. [Applause.] Among the three or four millions of 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 these cradles the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething think of it!—and putting iu a word of dead earnest, unarticulated, but perfectly justifiable profanity over it, too [laughter]; in another, the future renowhed astronomer is blinking at the shining milky way, with but a languid interest, poor little chap, and wondering what has become of thatother one they call the wetnuree [laughter]; in another, tne future great historian is lying—and doubtless be will continue to “lie” till his earthly rakslon is ended [laughter]; in another the future President is busying himself with no protounder 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 grand-

ment is try out some way to meaning no disrespect to the illustrious guest of this evening also turned his attention to some fifty-six years ago. And if the child is but the prophecyof “ a “’ the f e mighty few who will doubt but that he succeeded, [prolonged and uproarious laughter.]