“Well,” I thought, “children are keen observers after all. It might be interesting to read the thoughts of some of them. Now, there’s that Smith baby for example--what a wise expression it has, to be sure! Really, that child ought to be called Solomon. I would suggest the name to _pater familias_, only he might get frightened at the mere suggestion of such wisdom on the part of his offspring.” As a matter of fact, the Smith child is the most remarkable specimen of a young one I have ever seen. He is now some three years of age, yet has never made the slightest attempt to talk. As for walking, I question whether the child will ever be able to use his limbs very successfully. They are malformed and very imperfectly developed. But the child’s head has gone to the other extreme; while by no means symmetrical in outline, it is preternaturally large, with bulging frontal eminences and immense parietal protuberances. The eyes are brilliant, deep set, and reflect an expression of wise gravity that is positively eerie. The brow is wrinkled in strongly marked furrows and the general aspect of the face is somewhat shrivelled and prematurely old. Around the angles of the mouth are converging, plainly accentuated lines that give the face an expression of sternness. There is no color in the skin save about the eyelids, which are habitually red and tumefied. The dead, clayey whiteness of the child’s complexion is occasionally relieved by dark, blotchy eruptions, that make the unhealthy pallor of the skin still more noticeable. The most striking peculiarity of the Smith baby is its prematurely aged look, suggesting the grotesque combination of the face of a sickly old man with the body of a child. At first sight, the effect is somewhat startling. And yet, despite its physical defects, the child grows on. Knowing how utterly defenseless the poor little thing was against the circumstances which made it a caricature of healthy babyhood, and realizing its abject helplessness in the battle of life, I sincerely pity it. Is it not strange that mothers lavish so much affection upon such children as the Smith baby? No matter how many beautiful children she may have, the heart of the mother goes out to the least favored of her offspring in a wealth of love that is the only excuse the unfortunate child has for living. Mothers care naught for the law of the survival of the fittest--not they. Should such a child die, the poor mother mourns it as the one ewe lamb of her little flock. With the father it is different, somehow--perhaps not in all cases, but I know it is different with the father in this instance.