"Have you got a baby?" said a little girl to a gentleman riding out of Boston. It was a queer question, arising as it did from a child he overtook on the road. How his city friends would have laughed at him if they had heard the question--"Have you got a baby?" No he had got no baby, yet he was a man full forty years of age, and looked as though he might have been a father, and so thought the little girl. Yet he had no baby. Why? He was a bachelor! So he had to answer, "no, my pretty miss, I have got no baby." "Oh la, haven't you? Well _we_ have. We have got a baby at _our_ house!!" This was not interesting to a bachelor. How different it would have been if he had married Lucy Smith, whom he intended to a dozen years ago, but he was too busy then--too intent upon making money enough, to support a wife before he got one. Nonsense! How little he knew of the sweet music of the words, "have you got a baby?" How her heart would have leaped up and choked her utterance if she had now been riding by his side as his wife, instead of his "old flame," Lucy Smith! Lucy Smith, still, for she had never heard those words touchingly applied to her, "have you got a baby?" nor had she ever heard a sweet little girl say of her, "we have got a baby at our house!" How many a mother's heart has leapt for joy, at that question, when she could answer it, "Yes, I _have_ got a baby!" How many a father's heart will be touched with emotion when he reads, "Have you got a baby?" for he will think as I do, of a time when, returning from a long journey, he meets just such a little cherub of a girl at his own gate, who does not stop to ask him how he does, nor climb his knee for the accustomed kiss, so exuberant is her joy--so anxious is she to possess him with the secret that wells up and fills her very existence to overflowing, so that she must speak or burst, and hence she watches for Papa, and runs out to meet him at the gate with such a smile--such a joyous, glorious smile, and cry of "Oh, Papa, we have got a baby!!" How many a mother's heart will swell and throb, and how the warm tears--tears of joy and gladness--will flow as she hears that husband's footstep approach, for she knows he will say, "_Have_ you got a baby?" But there is no such joy now for that mother's heart. Yet that is the same father--fallen, trampled, dying, and she rushes to the rescue. Two police officers bear him to the side-walk and lift him, lifeless as he is, upon a hand-cart. How the idle crowd push and jostle each other to get a sight of the wounded man. What for? To administer to his wants; to give, if need be, something to minister to his relief? No. To gratify curiosity--morbid, idle curiosity. How this woman pushes and struggles to break the circle, crying, "Let me in, let me in; let me see him." How little the crowd heed her. They think it is curiosity, too, nothing but curiosity, that impels her, as it does themselves.