"Ten months!" said my father with a sigh. "Ten months! and I have not finished fifty pages of my refutation of Wolfe's monstrous theory! In ten months a child! and I'll be bound complete,--hands, feet, eyes, ears, and nose!--and not like this poor Infant of Mind," and my father pathetically placed his hand on the treatise, "of which nothing is formed and shaped, not even the first joint of the little finger! Why, my wife is a precious woman! Well, keep her quiet. Heaven preserve her, and send me strength--to support this blessing!" "But your honor will look at the baby? Come, sir!" and Mrs. Primmins laid hold of my father's sleeve coaxingly. "Look at it,--to be sure," said my father, kindly; "look at it, certainly: it is but fair to poor Mrs. Caxton, after taking so much trouble, dear soul!" Therewith my father, drawing his dressing-robe round him in more stately folds, followed Mrs. Primmins upstairs into a room very carefully darkened. "How are you, my dear?" said my father, with compassionate tenderness, as he groped his way to the bed. A faint voice muttered: "Better now, and so happy!" And at the same moment Mrs. Primmins pulled my father away, lifted a coverlid from a small cradle, and holding a candle within an inch of an undeveloped nose, cried emphatically, "There--bless it!" "Of course, ma'am, I bless it," said my father, rather peevishly. "It is my duty to bless it--Bless It! And this, then, is the way we come into the world!--red, very red,--blushing for all the follies we are destined to commit." My father sat down on the nurse's chair, the women grouped round him. He continued to gaze on the contents of the cradle, and at length said, musingly, "And Homer was once like this!" At this moment--and no wonder, considering the propinquity of the candle to his visual organs--Homer's infant likeness commenced the first untutored melodies of nature. "Homer improved greatly in singing as he grew older," observed Mr. Squills, the accoucheur, who was engaged in some mysteries in a corner of the room. My father stopped his ears. "Little things can make a great noise," said he, philosophically; "and the smaller the thing; the greater noise it can make." So saying, he crept on tiptoe to the bed, and clasping the pale hand held out to him, whispered some words that no doubt charmed and soothed the ear that heard them, for that pale hand was suddenly drawn from his own and thrown tenderly round his neck. The sound of a gentle kiss was heard through the stillness. "Mr. Caxton, sir," cried Mr. Squills, in rebuke, "you agitate my patient; you must retire." My father raised his mild face, looked round apologetically, brushed his eyes with the back of his hand, stole to the door, and vanished.