The Great Black Hush reached all the way around the Universe and in directions without any names, and it was huge and humble and superior and helpless and mighty and in other ways it was very much indeed like a man. And as there was nothing to do, the Great Black Hush was bored past extinction and almost to creation. For there wasn’t anything else about save only the Wind, and the Wind would have nothing whatever to do with him and always blew right by. Now, inasmuch as everything that is now was then going to be created, it was all waiting somewhere to be created; and nothing is clearer than that. Lines and colours and musics and tops and blocks and flame and Noah’s arks and mechanical toys and mountains and paints and planets and air and water and alphabets and jumping-jacks, all, all, were waiting to be created, and among them waited people. I cannot tell you where they waited, because there was no where; but they were waiting, as anybody can see, for time to be begun. Among the people who were waiting about was one special baby, who was just big enough to reach out after everything and to try to put it in his mouth, and they had an awful time with him. He put his little hands on coloured things and on flame things and on air and on water and on musics, and he wanted to know what they all were, and he tried to put them in his mouth. And his mother was perfectly distracted, and she told him so, openly. [Illustration: “TO SEE WHAT RUNNING AWAY IS REALLY LIKE.”] “Special Baby,” she said to him openly, “I don’t see why every hair in my head is not pure white. And if you don’t stop making so much trouble, I’ll run away.” “Run away,” thought the Special Baby. “Now what thing is that?” And he stretched out his little hand to see, but there wasn’t anything there, and he couldn’t put it in his mouth; so without letting anybody know, he started off all by himself to see what running away is really like. He ran and he ran, past lines and colours and blocks and flame and music and paint and planets, all waiting about to begin, till he began to notice the Great Black Hush, where it lay all humble and important, and bored past extinction and almost to creation. “What thing is that?” thought the Special Baby, and put out his little hand to get it and put it in his mouth. So he touched the Great Black Hush, and under the little hand the Great Black Hush felt as never he had felt before. For the Special Baby’s hand was soft and wandering and most clinging--any General Baby’s hand will give you the idea if you care to try. And it made it seem as if there were something to do.