We have in this article treated of babies only when they are inarticulate, when none but the mother or the constant nurse can understand them. That is commonly reckoned by the stranger or the mere male person the least interesting age of all, but to the mother--and, indeed, to all women and grown girls--it is the most interesting. Then the baby's clinging helplessness, its wide stare of wonder, and its bright, human smile and crow of response to a kind look or tone, suffuse the female heart with an unimaginable delight. What pride is felt in the health and beauty and weight of the baby! ("Here's a leg for a babe of a week!" says the doctor in Tennyson's "Grandmother.") How his active crawling is admired!--and sometimes his singular taste for buttons, and marbles, and cinders! With what wonder and gratulation is the appearance of his first tooth hailed! With what expressions of joy is attention called to his first attempts at walking, and how "dear" he is when he first goes "pattering over the boards!" But beyond and beneath all these common phenomena the earliest infancy has ravishing mysteries which only the mother can patiently watch, and pore over, and understand. Every day, every hour brings to her a new joy, of which she can speak to no one; for that which no else one sees--the waking attention, the dawning reason--the mother sees, and that which no one else hears the mother hears. [Illustration] "_On the Stump for the Pump._" +By Sir Wilfrid Lawson.+ [Illustration] "The Editor of +The Strand+ asks Sir W. Lawson to send him an article with some such title as 'Thirty Years of Temperance Advocacy,' or 'On the Stump for the Pump.'" You ask me to write "On the Stump for the Pump," Don't you think 'twould be better, "The Pump on the Stump?" Sure that "pump" should be able a tale to unfold, For you hint in your letter it's thirty years old! Just think of one pumping for thirty long years, And the water scarce yet has got up to their ears. Yet while water's so hard to the right pitch to rise, The full tide of beer mounts quite up to our eyes. There is Goschen, and Randolph, and Booth, and old Smith, Men of fame and renown, and great vigour and pith, They come with their brooms, and they come with their mops, And they labour and sweep, but the tide never stops. Away in the torrent go virtue and wealth, Peace, plenty, and happiness, order and health, And "Bung" with a chuckle cries, "Pump as you may, But beer and the brewer still carry the day." Now you kindly have asked me to say what I think On this troublesome, terrible question of drink. So the "Pump" will endeavour to pour something out, A "pump" at the least should be able to "spout!" Well, well, I must hope that I shall not quite fail, So the "Pump," as you've asked him, will pour out his tale.